Vision:

As a school community, we believe our children possess unique gifts and qualities; as such they have the right to succeed, recognise their own greatness, and develop who they are in a respectful and caring environment.

Our school ethos is firmly rooted in our values with a ‘love of learning’ being the foundation of everything we do…so that ‘Together We Shine.’ Clarendon’s bespoke curriculum is broad and balanced taking into account our school’s unique characteristics. Our curriculum is co-designed by teachers and children, where an enquiry-based approach enables children to lead and teachers to facilitate the learning.

We believe that our high-quality enrichment provision is essential for developing well-rounded, confident, and engaged children. Our enrichment experiences are interwoven throughout the whole school curriculum generating high levels of curiosity, a thirst for investigation and adventure.

We build children’s aspirations demonstrating possibilities for their future lives. Clarendon’s Values underpin all that we do in school fostering independence and resilience. High expectations in speech, language and communication strengthen the children’s ability to learn at a deeper level, allowing them to articulate their learning; demonstrating quality thinking and application of skills and knowledge.

Physical and mental wellbeing are prioritised within our curriculum design allowing children opportunities to exhibit spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding.

Our carefully crafted enrichment curriculum balances the national expectations and an all-encompassing range of experiences allowing our children to flourish. Clear strategic planning allows the curriculum to be dynamic and adapt to the context of the school and children’s needs.

Age related expectations combine the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills to create a purposeful and exciting learning journey for every child. The curriculum has high expectations to combine transferable skills, demonstrate a breadth of vocabulary and develop strong cross curricular links.

Our structured enrichment programme stimulates and engages creative thinking skills, problem solving involving a multitude of activities enhancing enquiry and reasoning skills.

Enrichment is embedded in the personal development strategy and vision to nurture every child in school. Strong provision for our children encompasses high quality teaching and learning, adaptation, challenge, making learning relevant to children’s lives, which are all key elements of our Teaching and Learning Policy.

Excellent provision includes approaches to lessons, as well as clubs, life skill lessons such as cookery, CRE8 and Forest Schools, community projects and visits outside lessons. This policy outlines our Enrichment Curriculum and how we track the children’s progress.

School follows a peer coaching programme supporting all staff in their teaching, understanding of all current pedagogy and evaluation of elements from within the personal development curriculum striving for the best outcomes for every child.

Clarendon uses rigorous triangulated monitoring throughout the year to gauge the impact of the curriculum design. Curriculum teams monitor individual subjects: reviewing learning, evaluating pupil voice, providing individual feedback to move our enrichment practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development that through coaching trajectories are changed.

School monitors the impact of our enrichment offer through tracking the participation of children across school, pupil voice and analysis of attendance, behaviour and wellbeing. Some club places are intentionally set aside, with staff inviting children from specific vulnerable groups and families. This approach widens access to every child linking to broader school priorities.

Our whole school team strengthen our ethos and vision as we work together to reflect upon our curriculum and share outcomes driving forward next steps. Learning is measured through careful analysis of application of skills across the curriculum; showing how acquisition of knowledge is enhanced dramatically by expectations to evidence quality thinking and demonstrate individual understanding. Class teachers and curriculum teams conduct performance analysis linked to triangulated monitoring measuring performance against individual and school targets.

Our approach is inclusive in that we help all children to identify their particular passions, to nurture their creative instincts, and to support their potential. This policy outlines the school’s practice relating to enrichment for all.

Via our enrichment curriculum, we aim:

To build a strong sense of belonging and community.

To improve children’s engagement, attendance, and wellbeing.

To develop wider life skills, character, leadership, and readiness for employment.

Definition

Enrichment encompasses structured activities inside and outside the core academic curriculum spanning:

• Sport & Physical Activity: Team sports, recreational fitness, and outdoor pursuits.
• Arts & Culture: Drama, music, visual arts, and creative workshops.
• Nature, Outdoors and Adventure: time outdoors, climate education and sustainability projects, gardening, forest school and residentials.
• Civic Participation & Volunteering: Student voice, charity work, and community projects.
• Wider Skills & Academic Extension: Problem-solving tasks, independent research projects, and clubs.

Our provision is evaluated against the Department for Education’s 8 Enrichment Benchmarks, ensuring our offer is:

• Strategic: Led and championed by senior leadership.
• Accessible: Actively monitored to remove participation gaps for disadvantaged learners.
• Varied: Offering a balance of physical, creative, and intellectual activities.
• Progressive: Building complexity and leadership opportunities as students move through year groups.
• Evaluated: Regularly reviewed using student and parent feedback.
• Staffed & Supported: Backed by appropriate staff training and resources.
• Communicated: Clearly shared with students and families via our website and newsletters.
• Connected: Linked to wider outcomes like attendance, character development, and personal wellbeing.

Implementation

We serve a community where 96% of our children live in the highest level of deprivation. The school views this as not being a barrier but as a driving force to provide enabling experiences for all children.

The school’s enrichment provision encompasses a wide range of activities and experiences that exist beyond the curriculum, either linked directly to the curriculum or covering skills, knowledge and activities that work in addition to it. All activities are meaningful and aligned to individual and collective needs. Every child participates in life skill lessons, for example Forest School as well as regular provision within the wider curriculum. All children are invited to apply for all extra-curricular activities. (Refer to the school website, ‘Enrichment’)

Our offer allows the children to explore their interests, try new activities and have fun, alongside developing skills and knowledge that can help with transitions and future readiness.

Every child participates weekly in our enrichment curriculum supporting personal growth, wider engagement with school, essential skill development e.g. team building and enquiry skills, and wellbeing.

Enrichment is celebrated and recognised as a way for children to use their talents, create positive memories and inspire a lifetime of adventure. This is reflected in our curriculum and approaches to teaching and personal development.

Our curriculum documents are available on the school website highlighting the structured approach and carefully crafted opportunities that link to learning within the daily timetable, as well as outside of the normal timetable. School blogs showcase our personal development experiences, feedback from children and parents.

Whole School ‘Wow’ Weeks are examples that show where holistic learning, outside of the traditional confines of a 50-minute lesson, is at the heart of our personal development approach. We have three bespoke weeks scheduled throughout the year. This approach enhances the taught curriculum as well as improves emotional wellbeing, expands friendship groups, builds stronger relationships between staff and children and improves behaviour and attendance.

Our wow weeks include every class from Nursery to Year 6 and consist of the following:

• focus on a school project where we all share our outcomes with one another and families, for example, the school project ‘Clarendon’s Natural History Museum with a Twist’
• each class is allocated a key question to investigate for the duration of the week, e.g. (Nursery) ‘How can we rescue the dinosaur in danger?’, (Reception) ‘What does the habitat for a plant eating dinosaur look like?’, (Year 2) ‘Why is biodiversity important?’, (Year 5) ‘Should humans prepare for another asteroid hit?’
• all projects are carefully planned and structured to align with our school values delivering a clear enrichment entitlement for every child
• each week has several curriculum foci to base a wide variety of work upon, e.g. this wow week had STEM, Writing and Science as the vehicle for the week’s learning
• teachers and children are invited to add to these subjects depending on their question and lines of enquiry
• teachers and children choose how to allocate their time each day to meet the learning objectives
• for every wow week Art & DT, Cookery and Outdoor Learning feature heavily where the children have opportunities to develop their own creativity linking to the class project, e.g. building shelters that colonists could live in on Mars, build security defences to protect humans from dinosaurs, prepare a menu & cook a plant based meal that colonists on Mars could replicate using our growing tower
• we always celebrate the culmination of the project with a whole school event where there are clear opportunities for interaction across classes, helping children to build relationships beyond their own class and engage more fully in the school community. Parents and families are invited to share in their children’s learning by visiting the event. For example, a Museum is created in the school hall mirroring a real museum style environment with exhibits from every class depicting their learning from across the week.

Forest School is a key part of our life skill provision. It is such an important part of our personal development curriculum because it provides holistic, child led outdoor learning that builds confidence, social skills and emotional resilience outside of the traditional classroom. Forest School’s enrichment offer is carefully designed, with the intention of making activities meaningful and aligned to individual and collective needs. Every child participates each year to support personal growth, wellbeing, essential skill development and wider engagement.

Benefits of our Forest School provision are improved independence, an ability to solve real world problems, improved mental health and wellbeing, awareness of cooperation and empathy, developments in physical strength, and regular contact with nature.

Cookery is another of our three life skill lessons that every child has access to as part of their enrichment lessons across the academic year. This runs alongside the children DT national curriculum expectations.

Cookery lessons are vital as part of our curriculum because it teaches essential life skills, supports academic learning and promotes lifelong health. Our children learn to work as a team and develop a sense of personal achievement when sharing a finished dish, develop hand and eye coordination through chopping, stirring etc, combine academic subjects such as science and maths when weighing ingredients and learning about a balanced meal, children learn how to cook for themselves and others affordably and safely.

CRE8 is an additional art and DT life skill lesson where the children build vital cognitive, emotional as well as physical abilities that academic subjects alone cannot fully address.

Through these lessons children experiment with different materials, develop creative problem solving skills, foster resilience, develop fine motor control when manipulating paint brushes, pencils and clay, and where everyone has the opportunity to create a piece of artwork allowing them to visualise an end goal, select appropriate tools and allow their creativity to flourish.

Summary of Clarendon’s Enrichment Offer – Five Core Categories

Links with External Partners

We use a variety of resources, free and funded, to support our enrichment provision.

School works with the Arts Council England which champions artistic and cultural experiences.

• School has held the Gold Arts Mark for 6 years to date, and the Gold Rights Respecting Award for 6 years.

Children in Year 5 complete the Bikeability bicycle training programme funded by the Department of Transport. The children learn how to safely cycle on the roads.

We work with our Music Hub to help support our quality music provision. Partnerships have enabled school to loan musical instruments and to watch live musicians perform in our school.

As part of our Climate and Sustainability Curriculum, we subscribe to the National Education Nature Park resources. This DfE funded environmental programme helps our children learn about the school estate and how we can improve it for themselves and for nature.

• School holds the Distinction level of the ECO- Schools Award, the Gold Green Tree School Award, RHS Five Star Gardening School Award and the Step Outside award for EYFS.

Every class in school applies for STEM Ambassadors to visit them throughout the year. STEM learning is a not-for-profit organisation that supports all schools.

• School has held the Silver Gilt Primary Science Quality Mark for 9 years to date, and the Gold STEM Clubs Quality Mark.

Our children participate in whole school STEM projects organised by CREST – British Science Association.

• School holds the Bronze level CREST Award.

Our children in KS2 participate in clubs and competitions with other schools in the authority organised by The School Games.

All classes work with the Royal Ballet and Opera. School organises live online workshops widening access to the arts for our children. The children receive live sessions introducing them to ballet, opera and stage design.

Our Year 4 cohort work closely with the Northern National Opera on their ‘Finish This’ Project to compose their own ending to a specially commissioned operatic piece of music to share with other schools in the North West.

• School has held the Gold Arts Mark for 6 years to date.

School has its own Daily Mile running track that the children use daily in their free time as well as during their weekly PE afternoon.

• School holds the Gold School Mental Health Award.

We work with our local Careers Hub and Teach First to introduce our children into the world of work. We connect with volunteers from different professions who attend school and share their experiences and pathways into work. We curate our own Careers Day with a multitude of visitors who work with all our children.

How We Celebrate and Share Our Children’s ‘Love of Learning’

It’s All About Me (IAAMs) days are special days – three times a year- where the children get to talk with their class teacher privately about what they are really proud of themselves for. We celebrate their uniqueness not just the academic: the children share everything that they love learning about, and how they are doing in their personalised approach to learning in school. This allows the children to share their interests, their passion for particular strands of enrichment, showcasing their determination and aspirations.

The children get dedicated time to review their ‘Celebration Books’, art folios, all of their exercise books in preparation for their ‘It’s All About Me’ conversations. The children choose special events, school experiences, pieces of work to talk about from their books that they’re proud of, and say why they make them smile.

The class teacher discuss’ with the child how well they are progressing in each subject using their personalised target booklets showing they’re achievements so far in the year, and sets them clear targets for the next term.

The child’s teacher will share top tips as well that will help them to become even more brilliant than they already are!

The children’s personalised targets are highlighted in yellow in real time by the teachers, showing the child’s progression through their age-related expectations for each subject. These targets are shared with home each half term in your home school reading diaries. The children have ownership of their target booklets and review daily all the    wonderful things they’ve yet to learn about during the year.

Taking the time to choose their favourite pieces of work is one of the most rewarding experiences for everyone involved. Thinking about why their work has made them so proud and so happy allows the children to reflect on their own development before their conversations with their teacher.

Aspiration: Roles and Responsibilities for the Children in School

Every child has the opportunity to hold one of the class roles to support their peers and foster feelings of belonging. The children learn about the responsibilities for the role they have applied for spanning the duration of the academic year.

The Class Leaders learn a variety of skills as part of their role: how to communicate effectively with others, public speaking, how to foster respect and levels of engagement, how to work collaboratively and as a team, how to solve problems and evaluate their impact, ultimately improving their confidence and own self-esteem.