Since September 2014, all schools are required to redraft the annual teaching curriculum based on the statutory guidelines and objectives published by the Department for Education.

All the teachers  at Chater Infant School have worked together to review our annual curriculum to incorporate all the necessary adjustments.

The following fundamental commitment  has played a key  role in designing our curriculum:

We believe that all children should enjoy learning and that each child should be encouraged to be a life long learner and have an equal opportunity to achieve their maximum learning potential. This is a challenging goal and as a school we are constantly reviewing and developing our practice as we strive to achieve it.

At Chater Infant School we constantly strive : 

• To ensure every child feels valued and included, taking into account their individuality.
• To deliver a meaningful and relevant curriculum that offers rich and varied opportunities to inspire all children.
• To promote an ethos in which children become creative, innovative and confident.
• To develop enquiring minds with a capacity to think rationally, creatively and critically, thereby enabling children to make informed choices.
• To develop children’s sense of responsibility helping them become good citizens in a multi-cultural society promoting understanding of their own and other’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development

These changes will take effect from September 2015 for all children from Year 1 through to Year 6 .

Why the big curriculum change?

The main aim is to raise standards, particularly as the UK is slipping down international student assessment league tables. Inspired by what is taught in the world’s most successful school systems, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland, as well as in the best UK schools, it’s designed to produce productive, creative and well educated students. 

Although the new curriculum is intended to be more challenging, the content is actually slimmer than the current curriculum, focusing on essential core subject knowledge and skills such as writing composition and computer programming. It also follows on from similar curriculum revamps in Scotland and Wales, which were implemented in 2010 and 2008 respectively and have a similar focus on excellence and core skills.

What are the main changes?

The main changes in the core subjects covered by the National Curriculum are summarised below:

Subject	What’s new?
English	Stronger emphasis on vocabulary development, grammar, punctuation and spelling (for example, the use of commas and apostrophes will be taught in KS1) Handwriting – not currently assessed under the national curriculum – is expected to be fluent, legible and speedy Spoken English has a greater emphasis, with children to be taught debating  and presenting skills
Maths	Five-year-olds will be expected to learn to count up to 100 (compared to 20 under the current curriculum) and learn number bonds to 20 (currently up to 10) Simple fractions (1/4 and 1/2) will be taught from KS1, and by the end of primary school, children should be able to convert decimal fractions to simple fractions (e.g. 0.375 = 3/8)
Science	Strong focus on scientific knowledge and language, rather than understanding the nature and methods of science in abstract terms Evolution will be taught in primary schools for the first time Non-core subjects like caring for animals will be replaced by topics like the human circulatory system
Design & technology	Afforded greater importance under the new curriculum, setting children on the path to becoming the designers and engineers of the future More sophisticated use of design equipment such as electronics and robotics
ICT	Computing replaces Information and Communication Technology (ICT), with a greater focus on programming rather than on operating programs From age five, children will learn to write and test simple programs, and to organise, store and retrieve data From seven, they will be taught to understand computer networks, including the internet Internet safety – will be taught in primary schools

More information about the curriculum can be found in the Year Group Pages listed in the tab to the left of this page.