At St Joseph’s all teaching and learning derives from the National Curriculum as set out by the DFE. Our aim is to provide a broad and balanced curriculum that enables each child to realise his/her potential.

The key to positive pupil progress is found in the quality of teaching and learning and at St Joseph's we constantly strive to provide the best possible opportunities for children to learn and remember more. 

We want the pupils from St Joseph’s to succeed in life and to make a valuable contribution. Interpersonal skills, resilience, perseverance are just some of the life skills we aim to develop through our approach in order to enable pupils to achieve our aims.

Early Years Foundation Stage

Our youngest children follow the Early Years Foundation Stage and guidance materials: This framework enables learning and teaching to meet the diverse needs in seven key areas of learning.

Most children will achieve and some, where appropriate will go beyond the early learning goals by the end of the Foundation Stage.

High emphasis is placed on developing independence through play and exploration, indeed we see this as key to the development of our children.

The children learn in a language rich environment with key emphasis on speaking, listening and developing a love of reading. 

Independence in learning is promoted through carefully structured and planned activities. Learning takes place both indoors and outdoors and the children are encouraged to explore their world through access to a variety of media, opportunities for role play and creative activities. Links are made using a topic theme. Central to all learning is the development of a language-rich environment.

Daily phonics sessions take place and the children are encouraged to reinforce learning through simple activities at home by reading books that they are able to decode independently. 

Close links are essential between home and school in this significant time of their lives. Children learn much at home as well as in school and this enables both to gain an overall view.

Early Years and readiness for School

Every effort is made to help your child settle into school as quickly as possible.  In the summer term your child will have the opportunity to visit the school and meet the class teacher and the other children in the class.

Starting school is an exciting time for children but on occasions even the best-prepared children can find starting school an overwhelming experience. They need to come to terms with a dramatic change of routine, unfamiliar surroundings, large numbers of sometimes noisy children and maybe a longer day. Every effort is made by staff to help your child settle in easily and quickly.

National Curriculum

All children in the school are taught the Core subjects – English, Maths, Computing, Science, RE and also the following  Foundation Subjects - History, Geography, Art & Design, Design & Technology, Music, PE, PSHE and Languages.

Emphasis is placed on mastering the skills needed in all subjects and applying them. Each subject has its own programme of study as outlined in the National Curriculum. Subjects can often be taught cross curricular and through a thematic approach which we feel enable the children to make real sense of their learning through clear links.