Prep School Curriculum

The curriculum must be seen as the major component of a pupil’s education, which, together with the pastoral care and the extra-curricular activities offered, helps pupils to develop a wide range of key and transferable skills so that they leave the school equipped to become a valuable member of society.

Our planned curriculum activities are organised in order to promote learning and personal growth and development. We aim to provide a challenging and stimulating curriculum which encourages an enthusiasm for learning, intellectual curiosity, creativity, personal growth and development.

The School provides an academically challenging environment, which is vibrant, happy, creative and stimulating. Our teachers have high expectations but equally foster a nurturing environment in order to promote pupils’ academic growth and to provide the support they need in order to make excellent progress in their studies. It includes not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the range of extra-curricular activities that the school organises in order to enrich the experience of pupils. It also includes the ‘hidden curriculum’, or what the pupils learn from the way they are treated and expected to behave.

At St John’s Priory School we follow the Cornerstones Curriculum. Cornerstones is a nationally recognised approach for delivering outstanding learning opportunities for children and we are very excited to be able to offer the benefits of the Cornerstones curriculum to our children.

We believe children learn better when they are encouraged to use their imagination and apply their learning to engaging contexts. Our curriculum provides lots of learning challenges throughout the academic year that will require children to solve problems, apply themselves creatively and express their knowledge and understanding effectively across the curriculum.

The Cornerstones curriculum provides a rigorous essential skills framework, outlining end of year expectations in all subjects. These essential skills are linked to activities and are age and stage related, so that our teachers can track children’s progress and identify their individual learning needs. This will help us to continue our commitment to ensuring that all children are working at an appropriate level and are receiving suitable challenge.

We provide a comprehensive Curriculum Forecast each half term which explains what the children will be learning in each subject. They are invaluable in ensuring parents are well informed and can track what their child will be learning throughout their time with us.

More information about our curriculum can be found below.