William Butler Yeats said that, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” We see that ‘fire’ as the curiosity children naturally have when they begin school about the world they live in. We want this to be maintained and nurtured in all the subjects we teach. By doing so, our children’s desire to keep learning does not die. This thirst for learning will set up our pupils to be successful, irrespective of the path they choose in life. As a minimum, our curriculum should prepare children fully for the next phase of their education by ensuring that they have the knowledge and skills, which will set them up for the future. At Woodlands though, we want our curriculum to aim higher: we want to inspire the artists, engineers, musicians, scientists, linguists, mathematicians, inventors and sportspeople of tomorrow. However, we are not fixated on preparing children for work; there is far more to education – and particularly primary education – than that. We also understand that the majority of jobs our pupils will do in later life have not yet been invented. Our curriculum aims to broaden our children’s horizons; it should show them what they can achieve in their lives and what opportunities exist for them.

We aim to demonstrate the richness of the world we live in to our pupils, so that we can expose them to experiences, knowledge and role models that lift them up out of their familiar context and give them the kind of perspective that comes from encountering new and different situations. We set out a diverse range of experiences that every pupil will be offered from Reception to Year 6 in our Pupil Offer.  

Explore our other Curriculum Principles:

Developing kind people     

Powerful knowledge for all

Connecting and linking knowledge

Inclusive and challenging

Real, purposeful and relevant