Regina Coeli Primary is a two-form voluntary aided Roman Catholic school in South Croydon. They value and celebrate the culturally diverse community they serve and hope to draw on the community’s wealth of talent, skills and knowledge. The school motto is ‘Where there is Love, there is God‘ and pupils are introduced to the idea of service, both to the school and wider community, through the example of Mary our mother.
At Regina Coeli, the vision is to develop a community where the school will be a place of excellence, where all staff recognise their position of trust and their responsibilities towards the children in their care. The curriculum is designed to be knowledge-rich, enquiry-based, literacy-centred, and ambitious for all pupils and is underpinned by the National Curriculum.
Where there is Love, there is God
Regina Coeli Primary school motto
We applied for the Rethinking Curriculum pilot, excited by the prospect of a co-design project endorsed by the Chartered College. As a school, we were clear on our strategic direction for improvement given the strength of our existing curriculum but hoped to work alongside peers, experts and the college as we ‘unpacked and repacked’ our curriculum content. We noticed that whilst the overall curriculum planning remained strong, units were overpacked. We intended to clarify our content so that there was more space in the timetable to teach and inspired by Mary Myatt we endeavoured to do fewer things in greater depth.
We felt confident that the mapping of curriculum was strong but we wanted to augment units of work, adapt pupil tasks and streamline the content. Working in partnership with the Chartered College has been invaluable and we have benefited from being paired with Emma Turner as we embarked on this critical review of our curriculum through the context of Geography.
We began by looking at the tasks, the lessons and assessment activities – and if you have ever watched The Hotel Inspector, you will know that sometimes you have to take two steps back before you can move forward. We recognised that we needed to go back and shore up the structural pillars of the Geography long-term plan to ensure we had clarity over the curriculum allocation, rationale for units, and build a common understanding of the subjects’ academic fingerprint before we could make design decisions.
This year, we have been able to do this work alongside Emma, and through her expertise and support, we have worked to create a blueprint for planning curriculum change through the context of Geography. Working fully through one subject has been beneficial for us as a team and the space, tools and support we have received from partnering with the project ambassadors has developed the way in which we plan for strategic curriculum change. At times, we have had to pause and demarcate where and when some of the curriculum revisions will happen, knowing that the hotel must remain open for business even as we do some of the work behind the scenes.
Reflecting on our year so far we feel empowered and motivated. We feel equipped and ready for the next stages. We feel reassured that by returning to our curriculum framework with a critical eye and securing the structure we can make curriculum choices and changes that are purposeful and complimentary to existing components. We know that we have the opportunity to deliver a curriculum that serves the generation of children at Regina Coeli, of whom we have the privilege to teach.