We are proud of our unique and ambitious curriculum here at Knowle Primary School.  Your child's curriculum journey begins the moment that they start school in Reception or begin Nursery in Small Stones or Big Stones. 

Our curriculum has been expertly constructed by our leaders and teachers alongside colleagues across the Learning Academies Trust to ensure that every child receives the very best possible primary education, ensuring that they are ready for their next stages in education.  

For each subject we follow different programmes or schemes of learning which match or exceed the ambition of the National Curriculum. Our teachers and leaders have carefully considered adaptations and enhancements to match our local context and the needs of our children here at Knowle. 

Our curriculum has been carefully constructed using the following resources and programmes.  

For further information about the curriculum for each subject, please click on the tabs on this page.

The United Learning Curriculum has been selected following extensive research by subject leaders to teach the knowledge and skills in the majority of our wider curriculum subject areas. This curriculum is adapted to meet the needs of 'Knowle learners'. Teachers take the responsibility of driving the curriculum at Knowle to ensure that the specific needs of our learners are met. 

Why did we choose United Learning?

For a number of years, we followed a curriculum that was created and crafted by our teachers and leaders within the Learning Academies Trust. This curriculum was successful, laying secure foundations of knowledge for our pupils and was praised in numerous Ofsted inspections across the Trust. However, collectively as a Trust, we wanted something better. After robust and meticulous research and seeing curriculum's in practice across the country, we selected United Learning because it is a deliberately and purposefully sequenced curriculum rich in knowledge. It is written by experts and therefore enables our teachers to deliver expert lessons. The curriculum is highly ambitious and reaches beyond the National Curriculum. The package, which United Learning provides, allows teachers and leaders to collaborate with curriculum designers who are continuously reviewing and analysing the curriculum at an expert level – it never stands still and is continuously improved and adapted.

Specifically, as a school, selecting an ambitious curriculum which reaches beyond the National Curriculum was exceptionally important. It is important that we spark our children's curiosity, yield great knowledge and encourage a love of learning, which directly mirrors the six core principles of United Learning: entitlement, coherence, mastery, adaptability, representation and education with character.

We follow the United Learning curriculum when delivering History, Geography, Religion and Worldviews, Art and Design, Design and Technology and Science. 

6 Core Principles of United Learning Principles

Building on the Framework for Excellence (which sets out the principles which all United Learning schools work to), The United Learning Primary Curriculum has six core principles:

Entitlement

All pupils have the right to learn what is in the United Learning Curriculum, and schools have a duty to ensure that all pupils are taught the whole of it.

Coherence

Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects.

Mastery

We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts.

Adaptability

The core content – the ‘what’ – of the curriculum is stable, but schools will bring it to life in their own local context, and teachers will adapt lessons – the ‘how’ – to meet the needs of their own classes.

Representation

All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience.

Education with character

The United Learning curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, our co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.