Our children will blossom through experiencing a knowledge-rich curriculum which is both broad and balanced and fosters a love of learning, enabling all children to make connections.
We follow the National Curriculum with additional distinctive elements to meet the needs of our community ensuring that there are no limits to learning and our pupils are encouraged to embrace every learning opportunity that is presented to them.
Personal development is at the heart of our schools. It encourages, promotes, adopts and embeds a range of skills that allow children to be life-long learners, achieve a sense of belonging and ultimately flourish.
There are five broad areas; mental wellbeing; physical development; cultural capital; spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and British values; relationships, sex education.
For all our children we want our core offer to:
• Provide rich and varied experiences.
• Develop their ‘cultural capital’.
• Prioritise physical and mental well-being as much as academic achievements.
• Involve our families, wherever possible, to support all areas of their child’s personal development.
We support all children to acquire the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives, now and in the future. Our School Trust approach to personal development education develops the qualities and attributes children need to thrive as individuals, family members and members of society. The benefits to children of such an approach are numerous as personal development prepares them to manage many of the most critical opportunities, challenges and responsibilities they will face growing up in such rapidly changing and challenging times. It also helps them to connect and apply the knowledge and understanding they learn in all subjects to practical, real-life situations while helping them to feel safe and secure enough to fulfill their academic potential (realise the possible).
In our School Trust we also see broadening horizons and raising aspirations as part of our personal development offer. We want to give our children a wide range of experiences, including experience of the world of work. We believe that our curriculum offer must open doors and show children the vast range of possibilities open to them, therefore opening their eyes and helping them to keep their options open for as long as possible.
Our children will flourish through experiencing a knowledge-rich curriculum which is both broad and balanced and fosters a love of learning, enabling all children to make connections and be well prepared for the next stage of their education.
The curriculum is the beating heart of Dartington Academy; it has been carefully crafted and organised so that it plants the seeds with the necessary knowledge and skills to take them into the next stages of their education and beyond.
Our curriculum is ambitious and we want our pupils to grow without limits and develop the determination to succeed. Our vision and values give us the purpose and desire to create change in our local communities and the wider world beyond. Leaning into our Christian vision of `Together we grow, together we flourish’, we want our pupils to be empowered so that they can enact change and make a difference to the world around them.
Our curriculum has been deliberately designed to be ambitious and meet the needs of our children as well as the National Curriculum expectations. Subjects have been planned to immerse the children within their familiar local context before expanding their knowledge nationally and across the world. The curriculum is based on the acquisition of knowledge and skills which are the fundamental blocks of learning for each subject. This carefully chosen content enables all children to meet new and exciting concepts across a range of subjects in a sequential way and through the scope of our curriculum, learning is layered reiteratively so that prior learning is built upon.
Key areas of study have been carefully considered so that any gaps in pupils’ experiences are addressed – it has been designed with pupils at the heart. It enables our pupils to enhance their understanding of what it means to be a citizen in modern Britain, what it means to explore their local community and communities beyond and what it means to develop their cultural capital. It is about giving them opportunities and choices about their future and their impact as they progress through their school years and beyond.