Curriculum

Our vision and values are translated into a creative, child-centred curriculum that is broad, balanced, and ambitious. As a small community school in Old Windsor, we make deliberate curriculum choices that reflect the needs, interests, and strengths of our pupils.

Our vision is rooted in our school motto: Caring, Sharing and Learning Together. We value celebrating success and nurturing ambition so that our children grow into confident, responsible citizens and lifelong learners.

Lessons are carefully designed to meet the needs of all learners through our Going for Gold approach, inspired by our Royal links. Teaching is adapted while maintaining high expectations. We aim to ensure that all pupils can succeed.

Selected strategies from Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, supported by WalkThrus (Tom Sherrington), are used to:

Provide clear modelling and scaffolding

Build secure understanding of key concepts

Encourage children to challenge themselves appropriately

Preparing for the National Curriculum Changes (2026–2028)

In preparation for the launch of the revised national curriculum in 2028, King’s Court First School is developing a curriculum that strengthens coherence, relevance and meaningful real-world application.

Key areas of curriculum development include:

Strengthening cross-curricular planning, ensuring knowledge and skills connect meaningfully across subjects

Embedding food, nutrition and healthy lifestyles throughout PSHE, science, design and technology, mathematics and physical education

Developing pupils’ understanding of where food comes from, sustainability and environmental responsibility

Increasing practical learning opportunities, including food preparation, cooking skills and links to physical wellbeing

Building progression in vocabulary, health knowledge and self-care skills from Early Years onwards

These developments will ensure pupils are well-prepared for future statutory expectations while strengthening current provision across the curriculum.

High Aspirations for All

We encourage independence and ownership of learning. Our curriculum is ambitious, offering opportunities for greater-depth learning while ensuring that all pupils, particularly disadvantaged learners and those with SEND, gain the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.

This is achieved through a strong focus on Quality First Teaching and consistently high expectations across all subjects.

Our curriculum framework clearly sets out:

What? – the knowledge and understanding to be gained at each stage

How? – how learning is structured over time using subject-specific pedagogy

Quality Assurance – how we evaluate what children know and understand against expectations

Curriculum Structure and Progression

Subjects are organised around clear subject themes and threshold concepts

Threshold concepts are revisited across different topics to build strong, connected knowledge schemas

Progression is structured through two milestones:

Milestone 1: Key Stage 1

Milestone 2: Key Stage 2

Each milestone includes procedural and semantic knowledge that deepens over time

Addressing Learning Gaps

Children may have gaps in their knowledge or understanding if key concepts have not yet been securely grasped. At King’s Court, we focus on the stage of learning a child is currently at, rather than solely on age-related expectations.

Gaps are addressed through:

Quality First Teaching and ongoing formative assessment

Carefully planned curriculum maps ensure essential skills are systematically covered

Phonics keep-up groups targeting key gaps

Provision maps with small-step targets for pupils with SEND

This approach supports both academic progress and children’s mental health and wellbeing.

Research-Informed Curriculum Thinking

Our curriculum is influenced by well-established educational research, including:

Chris Quigley – Essentials Curriculum

Tom Sherrington – WalkThrus

Rosenshine – Principles of Instruction

Education Endowment Foundation – Adaptive Teaching

Kirschner – problem-based and enquiry learning models

We have developed an ambitious curriculum that provides pupils with a rich diet of learning across all subjects, while carefully considering staff workload and wellbeing.

Quality Assurance

Across the curriculum, teaching enables pupils to revisit, recap, and build on prior learning. This strengthens long-term memory and understanding.

Examples include:

Learning core sculpting techniques in art before creating final pieces

Securing accurate facts and methods in mathematics before applying them to problem-solving

Assessment

As learning is a change to long-term memory, the impact is measured over time.

Impact is assessed through:

Teacher assessment and comparative judgement

Summative assessments:

Reading and spelling ages in English

End-of-block assessments using White Rose Maths

Termly arithmetic and reasoning assessments

Foundation subject assessment using cold and hot tasks

Floor books evidencing progression in PE, PSHE, music and computing

Quality assurance includes:

Learning walks and lesson observations

Instructional coaching using WalkThrus by Tom Sherrington

These approaches ensure that teaching methods align with curriculum depth expectations and that pupils are supported to make sustained progress.

“The school has developed an ambitious curriculum that provides pupils with a rich diet of learning across all subjects. Pupils learn the knowledge and skills they need to deepen their understanding.”
Ofsted, May 2025

For further subject-specific information, please see individual curriculum pages or contact the school office.

The heart of everything we do at King’s Court First School is rooted in our vision and values. They underpin our teaching and learning, shape our culture, and support us in preparing our pupils to become confident, happy, and responsible citizens in an ever-changing educational landscape.