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Curriculum Intent

Following research into cognitive science that has been undertaken by key leaders within CSAT, our curriculums have been built upon the belief that learning only occurs when it moves from the short term to the long term memory.   Our curriculums are constructed with a strong knowledge focus and we are clear that knowledge is different to information, with knowledge being a path of interconnected facts rather than information which is a bank of isolated facts.

Curriculum drivers shape each individual curriculum within CSAT. They have been derived from exploration of the backgrounds of our students, our beliefs about high quality education and our values. Each school/pre-school has appropriate curriculum drivers that shape the curriculum content based on the needs and aspirations for the community that it has been written for. Cultural capital gaps have been identified and content and breadth of the curriculum are purposefully planned and implemented to provide each community with the highest levels of aspiration and opportunity.

Curriculum breadth is shaped by our curriculum drivers, cultural capital and topics/subjects and our ambition for our students is to achieve in line with the best of the best.

In our schools, clear end of phase expectations are in place at a trust level and these have been created around key threshold concepts that are returned to again and again to support children’s access to repetition of key subject based concepts. Through exploring these concepts in a wide variety of topics this constant re-visiting approach will gradually build a greater understanding of them.

In our schools the end of phase expectations give us a clear criteria for assessment for each subject and these are used across schools to quality assure the outcomes from our curriculums

All trust schools/pre-schools believe firmly in repetition and retrieval of information on a regular basis as they believe that it is key to children retaining the knowledge they have learnt. We believe learning is most effective when there is spaced repetition and we believe that retrieval of previously learned content that is frequent and regular, increases both storage and retrieval strength. As a result, time is built into planning to ensure that repetition and retrieval is proactively thought about.

Language development is key within every school/pre-school curriculum and to support this we have carefully planned vocabulary expectations that are categorised to ensure gaps are filled, vocabulary is built on daily and language expectations are always high.

All staff at CSAT have been involved in the development of their curriculums and are committed to devising bespoke curriculums around a common trust framework that are highly aspirational, exciting and relevant to their communities.