By the time the pupils leave West End Academy, we want all of our children to be ready for the next stage of their education and their life. In order to do this, children will need to develop crucial life-skills and positive personality traits to ensure that they make a valuable contribution to society.
Our intent is split into four parts. Firstly, all of our subject leaders have planned an ambitious progression of knowledge and skills that gives our children the best chance to succeed at school and supports them for their next stage of their curriculum. It is clear in each subject what our children must know and be able to do, and these bold ambitions can go beyond the National Curriculum.
Secondly, we focus heavily on the development of language across the school. This is because many of our children join the school with communication, literacy and language skills that are below those typical for their age. This work starts in earnest in our reception class to ensure children have the support that they need to become more fluent speakers. It continues in key stage 1 to ensure all of our children are fluent readers by the end of year 2. As a school, we staunchly promote a love of reading as we know that it will allow our children to flourish across the wider curriculum over time.
Thirdly, we ensure that our children are offered a wide range of opportunities and experiences given that some of the school’s catchment area is within a high level of deprivation, amongst the bottom 10% nationwide. Children are actively encouraged to join the Top Team, the school council or become mental wellbeing first-aiders. We ensure that each term, children have at least one visit out of school or a visitor into school to provide first-hand experiences which support and develop their learning. It is also our mission to ensure that all of our children attend at least one extra-curricular club each academic year.
Finally, we want all of our children to understand what it means to be a British citizen or, someone from another country who lives in Britain. Children should be aware of the rule of law, tolerance and being mutually respectful whilst understanding what it means to be living in a democracy and to have individual liberty. In addition, we also promote spiritual, moral, social and cultural development through all aspects of our work. We ensure children are developing skills and discussing issues relating to multi-culturalism, religion, race, gender and ethnicity. This is crucial for our school since the overwhelming majority of our children are white British.