Curriculum
Curriculum Vision Statement:
Intent:
The Hertford Heath Curriculum recognises that a strong primary education lays the foundations for future success. We want every child to become an ambitious, confident and lifelong learner, inspired by a curriculum that engages, challenges and nurtures their curiosity about the world around them. Through appropriate support, challenge and new opportunities, our children are enabled to make meaningful progress and at every stage of their learning journey.
Our curriculum is carefully designed and planned to promote academic achievement alongside personal growth and development. In addition to the National Curriculum and Early Years Framework, it provides rich experiences and enrichment opportunities that broaden children’s experiences and prepare them for life beyond primary school.
From Nursery to Year 6, we clearly identify the knowledge, skills and vocabulary pupils need to acquire. These are carefully sequenced to build progressively over time, securing strong foundations while developing increasingly deep and sophisticated understanding.
Implementation:
Layer 1: Sources of Our Curriculum
At Hertford Heath, we draw on carefully selected schemes and resources, all rooted in the National Curriculum and Early Years Framework. These are continually assessed, reviewed and adapted to ensure they meet the needs of our children. We aim to go beyond the statutory curriculum, developing breadth, depth and ambition across every subject.
Layer 2: Concepts and Threads Curriculum Maps
Our concepts and threads maps set out our curriculum intent, ensuring clear progression in knowledge, skills and vocabulary within and across year groups. Developed over time by our Curriculum Lead in collaboration with subject leaders, they carefully map how learning builds and connects across each subject. Rather than teaching topics as isolated units, learning is structured around substantive knowledge, disciplinary skills, key concepts and curriculum threads. This enables knowledge to spiral and deepen over time, helping children to build strong mental schemas, secure foundational knowledge and develop the understanding needed to think deeply about increasingly complex ideas.
Layer 3: Individual Lesson Design
Our teachers use evidence-informed approaches, including Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, to design purposeful lessons in small, carefully sequenced steps. Lessons build on prior knowledge, provide meaningful challenge and use modelling, scaffolding and high-quality questioning to help every child succeed. We want pupils to be active learners who can rehearse, reflect, make connections, use subject-specific language and apply their learning in new contexts.
Layer 4: Assessment
Assessment is woven throughout our curriculum. Teachers continually check what children know, understand and can do, using evidence from lessons, books, discussions, entry and exit activities and end of unit assessments. This information informs planning and enables teachers to adapt teaching, address gaps and provide appropriate challenge. Our curriculum assessments measure whether children have secured the knowledge, skills and understanding expected at each stage.
Together, these four layers create a coherent, ambitious and carefully sequenced curriculum that enables every child to thrive academically, personally and as a lifelong learner.