Curriculum

Here is a short film about our curriculum development. This was made Pre-COVID. Since COVID we have made a number of changes to how we work in both Early Years and Key Stage 1.

In March 2019 our school closed to the majority of children (as did schools across the country) and we moved our curriculum online for the majority of children. Our Remote/Blended learning plan, for 2020/21 can be found here: Bolsover Infant & Nursery School - Remote Learning 2020/21 (bolsover-inf.derbyshire.sch.uk). The school opened wider in September 2020 and had another period of closure in the spring of 2021.

In the summer of 2021, it became very evident that the children in our care were going to need a very different way of working in order to support their mental health, learning behaviours, academic learning and progress, and also ensure that we can support them recovering from the impact of COVID. This, alongside the implementation of the new EYFS curriculum would mean that the new academic year, 2021 was going to need a new plan, a new way of working for children who needed different things from us as a school.

As a result we spent the summer of 2021 rewriting our curriculum statement. A curriculum statement which now takes into account that children have had limited experience of the world. Our youngest child, in nursery would have only been 19 months old when COVID hit and our eldest in Year 2, 55 months old (4 1/2 years). Our nursery children have spent half of their life in some kind of lockdown and for our older children up to a quarter.

This has impacted hugely on all of our children's social and emotional development, as well as their communication skills. It has shown to have made separation a huge issue for some of our young children, as well as manifesting in concentration and attention issues for others. Some children have not seen or played with others for a significant amount of time, with no baby and toddler groups open they have not mixed with others and widened their social circle. We have many children who have not attend any other settings, groups or places where they can mix with other adults or children. Even the children who were in school, have not experience all they should from school in the previous 18months. They have been in and out of school, with a range of adults in the teacher role including parents, siblings and sometimes nobody. All of this will have had a huge impact.

Our Curriculum Statement needed to reflect the impact of COVID for our children year on year. In 2021/22 we made huge changes to how we delivered learning, including:

Mixed age classes
Updated behaviour policy
More in-depth PSED sessions
More child led learning
Development of a Early Years Nuture Room

In 2022/23 we have moved back to single year group leaning, but have organised the school ready and prepared for developing around the children in our care.

Please scroll through our statement for 2022/23 below: