Hackney New Primary School

At Hackney New Primary School we offer a unique and bespoke curriculum that centres around our diverse cohort of children. The curriculum holds the school’s core values at its heart; academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, self-belief and responsibility. We believe that fostering and maintaining high expectations for all students for their academic achievement, behaviour in and out of the classroom, attendance and participation is central to the curriculum and our childrens’ success. 

All our subjects are carefully designed and mapped to promote intellectual curiosity and to ensure that children are given multiple opportunities to develop a deep knowledge and understanding of the objectives being taught. We have implemented the evidence informed practice of ‘I do, we do, you do’  This strong pedagogical practice, which relies on the gradual release of responsibility, ensures that we are upholding the concept of ‘low threshold, high ceiling’ to ensure that our curriculum is accessible and engaging to all our students, whilst simultaneously putting no limits on participants to take learning to a deeper level. Where possible we use ‘active learning’ and ‘sticky learning’ in our lessons, as we maintain that children learn through doing and that experiential learning is key to driving intellectual curiosity and academic excellence. 

At Hackney New Primary School inclusive and adaptive learning is paramount to raising and maintaining the aspirations of our pupils. We strongly uphold the value that every child has abilities, talents and skills that need to be nurtured and fostered throughout their journey at the school. Adaptive teaching is used in every classroom, in every lesson to ensure pupils are given every opportunity to meet objectives and to progress and achieve. Our SEND children and lowest 20% children are given special consideration to ensure that they progress in line with the other children despite the barriers to learning that they face. 

Throughout our subjects we use a range of assessment strategies to track our students’ progress. Outcomes of work are monitored with on-the-spot feedback which we believe improves academic performance, builds confidence and ensures a collaborative approach to learning between all stakeholders. Children are encouraged to take a high level of responsibility in their progress, along with the teachers, ensuring misconceptions are fixed straight away and opportunities to deepen understanding and concepts are taken wherever possible.  As well as this we use Test It, Beat It, Prove It, Reflect Its across subjects to check knowledge and ensure its retention from lesson to lesson and to encourage children to reflect on what they have learnt and deepen their thinking through making connections with previous learning or across other subjects. We also ensure that summative assessment is used to benchmark our children and keep informed on their progress throughout and across years. 

At the school we place a strong emphasis on cultural capital and ensure that our children are given a range of experiences and opportunities outside of the classroom. We develop this accumulation of knowledge, behaviours and skills that a child can draw upon and which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence to make them successful in society, into their career and their world in the future. We have developed ‘Passports For Intellectual Curiosity’  for each year group that carefully maps out the educational visits children will undertake, sporting and outdoor learning activities they will partake in, musical experiences they will receive and the in school activities and immersive experiences they will get. Leaders and teachers work in collaboration on these to ensure that children are taken to a range of places of worship, museums, galleries and places throughout their time from Reception to Year 6. We ensure to use the benefits of Central London being on our doorstep and use it as an avenue to develop culturally sensitive and aware children with high levels of respect for the world around them. 

Our school days are longer than many other primary schools to allow music to be taught as a core subject. We know that music enhances social and collaborative skills, develops confidence and coordination, improves memory and time management and fosters discipline and commitment to a skill. All our children participate in singing and string lessons, play within their year group ensemble and have musicianship lessons to develop them as whole musicians. This programme develops a sense of community where we come together to celebrate music and its ability to bring people together and to celebrate cultural diversity. 

The development of wellbeing and resilience is woven throughout the school not only through the music programme but the use of ‘Family Style Dining’. This initiative encourages and deepens the childrens’ understanding of healthy eating and the culture of food as well as developing their connections with their peers and staff through lunchtime discussion as they eat together and share in a diverse and varied menu together. 

At Hackney New Primary School it is our intent to equip children to become global citizens and to be active participants in their society. We are a Rights Respecting School and have embedded the childrens’ rights through every fibre of the school. The children have a strong understanding of their role as rights holders and the adults’ roles as duty bearers. Examples of rights that are discussed, supported and embedded throughout our curriculum  and culture are:

• Article 2 - No discrimination

• Article 7 - Name and nationality

• Article 12 - Sharing thoughts freely 

• Article 14 - Freedom of thought and religion

• Article 15 - Setting up and joining groups 

• Article 17 - Access to information 

• Article 28 - Access to education 

• Article 30 - Minority culture, language and religion

• Article 31 - Rest, play, culture and arts

• Article 38- Protection in war

All our children are equipped with the skills for a lively constructive place in society and to fit them to do a job of worth, through a curriculum with clear goals, expectations and a depth of knowledge and skills.

To find out more about the school curriculum please check out the website pages for each of the subjects or contact the school via hnpsinfo@ekotrust.org.uk.