Our Curriculum

At Peafield Lane Academy, our curriculum is designed to ensure that learning lasts a lifetime. We want every child to develop the knowledge, skills, confidence and curiosity they need to succeed, both at school and beyond.

Our curriculum is underpinned by four EVER principles, which shape the learning experiences we provide:

• Experiential – learning is brought to life through meaningful experiences, trips, visitors, practical opportunities and learning beyond the classroom.
• Vocabulary Rich – children are explicitly taught the language they need to understand, articulate and deepen their learning across the curriculum.
• Empowering – our curriculum develops confident, independent learners who recognise their potential, have high aspirations and are equipped to make positive choices for their future.
• Relevant – learning is meaningful and purposeful, making connections to our children’s lives, their local community and the wider world.

Alongside a carefully sequenced, ambitious and knowledge-rich curriculum, these principles ensure that children do more than simply remember facts. We want them to experience learning, talk confidently about it, understand why it matters and use it to make sense of the world around them.

Through our EVER curriculum, we aim to broaden horizons, overcome barriers and create opportunities for every child to thrive – truly Making Every Day Count.

 

How We Organise Our Curriculum: EYFS to Year 6

At Peafield Lane Academy, our curriculum is carefully organised to provide a coherent and progressive learning journey from Nursery through to Year 6.

As many of our classes are organised into mixed-age groups, our curriculum is structured through two-year cycles. This ensures that every child accesses the full breadth of the National Curriculum while avoiding unnecessary repetition.

Our Long-Term Plans identify the knowledge and content children will learn across each subject. Learning is carefully sequenced so that children can build on what they already know, make connections and revisit important knowledge, helping learning to become embedded in long-term memory.

Early Years: The Beginning of the Journey

We see the Early Years Foundation Stage as the starting point of our whole-school curriculum, rather than as a separate entity. Our EYFS curriculum follows the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage framework while reflecting the needs of our children, our school context and our EVER curriculum principles.

The knowledge, vocabulary and experiences developed in Nursery and Reception provide strong foundations for the learning that follows throughout Key Stages 1 and 2.

Mixed-Age Learning

The majority of subjects lend themselves effectively to mixed-age teaching, with carefully selected curriculum content enabling children to learn together while expectations reflect their age and stage.

In mathematics, related concepts are taught alongside one another wherever appropriate. For example, Year 5 and Year 6 may explore the same mathematical concept at different levels of complexity. Where curriculum content does not align effectively, children are taught the knowledge specific to their year group.

Key Progression Documentation

Our Flying High Trust Key Progression Documents underpin curriculum planning across the school. They identify the essential knowledge and skills children need to develop within each subject and help us ensure that learning is deliberately sequenced and increasingly ambitious.

Progression begins in Nursery and extends through to Year 7, supporting continuity not only within Peafield Lane Academy but also as children prepare for the next stage of their education. Links with secondary colleagues help us understand what children will encounter beyond Year 6 and ensure that our curriculum prepares them effectively for transition.

Ultimately, our curriculum is designed so that children build knowledge over time, revisit and connect previous learning, and know more and remember more.