Larkhall Primary Campus (where universal talent meets universal opportunity)

Larkhall Mainstream Primary School is a school by design. Subsequently, we have designed and developed clearly defined design principles (our purpose, the aptitudes we feel our children need to represent and what we do to achieve these aims) that underpin everything we do and these help us to begin to construct a methodology that we have implemented that is having a transformational effect on our children’s lives. 

What runs throughout the school are our fundamentals. These are our 4Rs :

• The Larkhall child will look at problems from a different angle, displaying great creativity, enabling them to become resourceful in seeking solutions, thus developing a limitless capacity to meet any challenge.
• The Larkhall child will develop their social and emotional skills essential for their success and well-being, have a strength of character enabling them to embrace challenges, withstand setbacks in order to build resilience and navigate their way through life.
• The Larkhall child will be able to think about how they have responded to situations, making good judgements and showing honesty. In the classroom they can accept feedback and use this to consider future plans and how they can improve on their learning. By doing all these things they will show that they are reflective.
• The Larkhall child will learn in an environment where people care for each other, demonstrate positive feelings toward others, have a sense of civic duty and compassion for the world they live in and at all times being respectful to all.

We deliver our curriculum predominantly through cross-subject learning journeys. These are standards based projects that are specifically designed to make connections between, and across, subjects to encourage deep and purposeful learning experiences for our children. These cross-curricular journeys are tightly structured through careful mapping of standards, skills and content and designed by teachers to ensure that all children achieve their potential.  We take great inspiration from Ken Robinson in his beliefs in a creative curriculum.

Following on from the first principle there is a focus on the intricacies not just what they learn but of how they learn. As a BLP school, this goes hand-in-hand with the belief that children need to understand themselves as learners and they can all develop their learning muscles. Therefore we are committed to providing opportunities throughout all areas of learning which promote and support the development of the key traits that will help them to become successful, lifelong learners.

Finally, there is a relentless focus on their character development – crucial for the choices they make throughout life. At the heart of the Larkhall Curriculum is the recognition that every child is an individual with unique strengths and needs. We understand that for many pupils, their success as a learner is directly linked to the development of their emotional intelligence and core character traits.

We take great inspiration from Kurt Hahn, whose vision can best be summarised as a kind of school designed to help kids discover their interests and passions, not just prepare them for tests. And it would be a school devoted to character development.

We believe in thinking differently, to empower our staff and children to be dreamers and idealists in order to challenge the status quo. We feel inquisitive mind-sets will ensure we consistently challenge assumptions, identifying problems and adapting to solve them. This spirit of discovery will lead to continuous improvement. We understand school is essentially a collection of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs, emerging into a culture.

To fully realise these principles, at Larkhall we deliver our curriculum predominantly through cross disciplinary learning themes. These are standards based projects that are specifically designed to make connections between, and across, subjects to encourage deep and purposeful learning experiences for our children. 

These themes are tightly structured through careful mapping of standards, skills and content and are designed by teachers to ensure that all children:

• produce thoughtful and a high standard of work and through this are positively improving themselves, their community and the wider world; 
• grow their characters in readiness for the challenges they will encounter in the world;
• and make better than expected academic progress, way beyond what even they themselves think they are capable of making, to allow them to access next steps in their learning. 

Our children strive to produce amazing work, grow their character and, as a result, they achieve academic success. It is important to note that each dimension is reliant on and symbiotic with the others.

Teachers at Larkhall, as clearly stated in the principles outlined above, are designers of the curriculum. Staff work collaboratively to create a curriculum overview that is highly engaging, purposeful and authentic. We believe our children’s capacity is limitless so we ensure that learning is academically challenging and rigorous, too. We passionately believe that a child’s happiness, interest, joy of learning and mental well-being are central to the school curriculum.

At the heart of our curriculum is creativity – children create amazing work so that they acquire knowledge that is then applied to bring about social change. In short, the power and compelling nature of our curriculum is in its alignment to the concept of powerful knowledge.  

We take great inspiration from Ken Robinson who believed that children are born creative and have an extraordinary capacity for innovation. And more importantly, children have no fear of making mistakes.

It is worth highlighting that we carefully craft the sequencing of our curriculum so that our children are well prepared for public examinations and are able to achieve academic success. 

However, to view our curriculum in such a limited way is to serve an injustice and does a disservice to our children’s capacity. We fervently believe that knowledge is increased in its power, and deepened in its resonance, through its connectivity and contextualisation and this is evident in the cross-curricular learning themes that staff design, to facilitate the amazing work that children create and their subsequent growth of character.

We believe in the crucial role that character plays in a child’s development. Character refers to ways of thinking, acting, and feeling that benefit others as well as ourselves. Character has many facets, incorporating strengths of heart, mind, and will. Strengths of heart (such as gratitude and kindness) enable harmonious relationships with other people. Strengths of mind (such as curiosity and creativity) enable independent thinking. Strengths of will (such as grit and self-control) enable us to achieve goals.

Clearly, our intent is much more ambitious than a narrow pursuit of public examination success. Therefore, our ambition, and emerging reality, is that:

• children develop as agents for positive social change;
• children are independent, inquisitive, curious and creative; 
• children lead their own learning; 
• children are empowered so they can question perceived truths and challenge existing ideas;
• children achieve well so that increased opportunities are open to them and; 
• children become the best version of themselves

These are underpinned by our FOUR Rs of what we strive to ensure our Larkhall children to be.

More than anything our curriculum is inextricably linked to, and is a key driver of, our culture.

The purpose of our school is founded on engaging our children with powerful knowledge that affects positive social change. Indeed, the power of our curriculum is that it shows children their place in the world and compels them to question this, and thereby unleashes their ability to bring about positive change. As a collective, we are thoughtful and deliberate, allowing us to think things through. We feel inquisitive mind-sets will ensure we consistently challenge assumptions, identifying problems and adapting to solve them.  

We celebrate our Inclusivity. Every child, no matter their starting point, is expected to work as hard as he or she can, and behave as well as he or she can, without qualification. This spirit of discovery will lead to continuous improvement. Teaching and learning are personalised throughout the curriculum through tailored programmes for a wide range of pupils with differing needs, so that all are able to receive appropriate challenge or support as needed in order to participate, progress and achieve. 

At Larkhall we are very proud of the enriching extra-curricular provision we run, enabling as many children as possible to access a class, enabling them to learn a new skill and discover a new passion. Enrichment is every pupil’s entitlement and we promote opportunities to learn beyond the classroom which inspire and motivate pupils to achieve outstanding progress in their chosen field. 

Learning at Larkhall we hope is experience-rich and we are committed to utilising the community around us to develop passion in our children. The basis of their work is that through the curriculum, together with their learning and their amazing work, they produce something that has purpose and contributes to making our school, community, town, country and world a better place. 

We encourage and create the climate for our children to be compassionate citizens: we do this not through merely developing their cultural capital so they individually improve but through expanding opportunity so that they can impact positively on others both in the school and in the wider community. 

As such, we nurture and develop an understanding of how kindness, empathy and concern for others must define us, as both individuals and also as part of society, if we are to create a more just and compassionate world. We track, and are extremely mindful of, equity of opportunity so that all students regardless of background are provided with opportunities that they might otherwise be denied because of social barriers.

Indeed, our pledge to our children and families is that fieldwork, including visits to museums, art galleries, theatres, the local area and other parts of this great city of London have to offer, will feature in every theme. We actively construct our curriculum to address any deficit in knowledge and experience that might exist because of disadvantages in our community.

In summary, our curriculum empowers our children to question, challenge and empathise. There is a clear and resolute link between academic subjects, learning themes and the pursuit of character growth. 

As stated, we believe and we are convinced that the purpose of learning is not just to pass exams but to facilitate a positive contribution to the world and positively encourage children’s voice in this active discourse. As a consequence, the purpose of our learning is to make students discern and question, to be able to challenge existing orthodoxies and to strive to live their lives based on integrity, respect and with empathy for others. 

We are a school rooted in the community. We are committed to improving the life chances of our children, both within our local community and beyond. We achieve so much more when we work together to bring about real success and improvement for ourselves and families. We are also so much happier when the improvements we, as individuals make, also improve the lives of those around us and our local community. Our sense of community enables us to look back at where we have come from, to see where we are today and to support us where we hope we’re going.

Children leave Larkhall feeling secure and prepared to enter the wider world as active and responsible participants in society.  We are confident that our curriculum prepares our children for careers in a fast changing world, developing them into global citizens who have lively and enquiring minds.