“We want our children to believe they can make a difference”
“We want our children to take risks and aspire to achieve their goals.”
“We want our children to be resilient and challenge themselves and each other in order to succeed together.”
International education comparisons based on narrow skills will become increasingly meaningless. We need to champion a new kind of learning; one which values teamwork, creativity and the diversity of opinion held within our classrooms. We need to educate our children to think more critically, more ethically and become more geo-politically aware.
Global Challenges Insight Report: The Future of Jobs 2017
Employers are calling for education to expand its focus beyond the traditional cognitive domain. A recent survey by PwC indicates the need for schools to increasingly emphasise teamwork, resilience, creativity and mindset.
Alongside the need to ensure our education system is preparing children for the future, sits the desire to make our world a better place.
This calls for us to think about our Barnehurst Curriculum differently. If we want children who can believe, achieve and succeed together, the change must start with us. We want our children to thrive in our challenging world. We want them to be able to apply their skills and thinking to new situations and know they can make a difference.
Our curriculum is underpinned by education for global citizenship and our values. We believe that our children are entitled to an education that equips them with the knowledge, skills and values they need to embrace the opportunities and challenges they encounter; creating a future that they want to live in. Learning is brought to life through current contexts that connects to our children’s lives - who they are, how they fit into the world and how they can contribute back.
Our curriculum connects to real life, promotes thinking as a global citizen and develops the attitude and disposition of our children to make an impact on society. Our curriculum connects what is taught, as in knowledge and skills, with purpose.
We see our curriculum as one that allow children to see they can make a difference. That their contributions to the world are valuable and can make a change. We want our children to have an emotional link with their leaning and for them to learn collaboratively and supporting their peers.
Curriculum Implementation
Our Curriculum is underpinned by education for global citizenship and each term the focus will be linked to one of three global themes. We chose one theme per term in order for us to ensure our children have depth of learning and thinking.
These themes will form the bases of a global learning project and will be broken down into knowledge and understanding, skills and attitudes. We have been inspired by the work of Global Dimension and Oxfam’s Education for Global Citizenship when planning our curriculum projects. These have allowed our themes to link with global issues as seen below.
Our People 
- Social justice and equity
- Identity and diversity
- Human rights
Our World
- Globalisation and interdependence
- Sustainable development
Our Choices
- Peace and conflict
- Power and governance
This year we are very excited to be taking part in the "Educating for Equality Mark" in order to begin to address the inequalities that still exist in the world today. For more information about the Equality Mark, please speak to Mrs Hunter.
Across each year a number of high-quality core texts are used to create links and promote connectedness with the themes.
These are chosen for the start of each new term with an option to go off theme for the second half of the term. We have chosen to do this as we want to provide opportunities for escapism, to allow our children to enter other worlds and break away from some of the global issues surrounding ours.
Through the global learning project, we want to give children the belief that they can make a difference. To create a deeper meaning, we ensure that our curriculum promotes learning for both their cognitive domain and affective domain.
Through our knowledge, understanding and skills we aim to develop our children’s cognitive capacity but we need to ensure there is equal focus given to the affective domain. Here through our focus on values, motivations and attitudes towards learning we can ensure our children know the impact of their actions.
The objectives are identified in our Global Citizenship progression maps. Teachers use this to link subjects to their global learning theme and project. We do not promote tenuous links and therefore some subjects are taught discretely.
See here for our detailed progression of Global citizenship.
Our curriculum is a knowledge-engaged approach which acknowledges the relationship between skills and knowledge. We believe that skills need to be explicitly developed and taught but know that a certain degree of knowledge needs to be delivered. Although the relationship between the two in intertangled we consider the skill first when planning our curriculum. Plans are reviewed by school leaders to ensure there is progression of skills and by subject leaders to ensure there is progression of knowledge. As it is cross-curricular there is no expectation that each outcome of the curriculum content maps is ticked off each year. Focusing rather on depth.
Using a planning backwards approach, teachers carefully craft sequence of lessons thinking of the final project outcome and the steps needed to ensure progression towards it. These sessions are active, engaging and inspiring leading to a deeper understanding of the global themes and worldly issues. The projects drive motivation, determination and commitment within our children, whilst allowing children the opportunity to develop 21st century skills such as research, collaboration, innovation, presentation, evaluation and reflection.
Children are encouraged to become risk takers and are expected to evaluate the success of their project and the impact they have made. Alongside our school values we promote a growth mindset, where children are encouraged to learn from their mistakes in order to grow.
As we want our children to benefit from seeing the lasting impact they have made, we are focusing one of the three global learning projects as a local community project. Each year group will focus on impacting positively our school or local community each year. This will both impact our community as well as raise awareness of community needs for our children.
Curriculum Impact
- We ensure that our children’s attainment and progress are inline or exceeding their potential. We measure this using national data (where appropriate), our curriculum content maps and our trust wide assessment documents (ALS)
- We ask for feedback from our children, staff, parents, governors, trust and local community in order for us to review, adapt and move our practice forward.
- We constantly assess learning in class through discussions and through books in order to fill gaps, correct misconceptions and inform future design.
- Through book looks, observations, learning walks and discussions with staff and pupils, school and subject leaders get an overview of learning and impact.
- Our curriculum ensures that we develop well-rounded citizens with a clear understanding of values such as love, responsibility and friendship. Our new curriculum addresses negative stereotyping through investigating similarities and differences, and promoting acceptance, diversity, citizenship and human rights.
- Each term children review the impact they have made by completing their global learning project. They assess their contribution and take on the feedback they have been given by others. Children reflect on this and list possible changes they would make.
- Our children will be motivated by a strong personal sense of morality. They will be able to make sense of an increasingly globalised, complex and rapidly changing world. They will make decisions for the right reasons and in the best interests of our community. The children develop an awareness of how their own actions can impact others and the wider community. They will go out into the world and make a difference in their own lives and to others.
Here is a video celebrating Global Citizenship at Barnehurst
