Ysgol Treganna Curriculum Vision
Our vision as a school is to provide the highest possible standards of education and support for all our pupils, ensuring that everyone—pupils and staff alike—has numerous opportunities to achieve and exceed their potential, with no ceiling to their success.
The community is an integral part of our environment. We collaborate closely with the extended family of our community to offer inspiring experiences that promote a lively, current, and ambitious curriculum. This collaboration fires our pupils’ imaginations and fosters their curiosity. This joint working relationship is central to Ysgol Treganna school life, nurturing each pupil’s potential both within the school and in the community beyond.
Our successes on the Eisteddfod stage highlight the importance of creative extracurricular experiences, which develop our pupils’ confidence and initiative. Welshness, the language, and Welsh culture are integral to our vision, enabling us to nurture confident pupils who are proud of their language and heritage.
We encourage innovation, and our curriculum empowers pupils to push boundaries and collaborate on live projects to succeed. Every pupil is challenged with high expectations, ensuring that there is no ceiling to what they can achieve.
Through our pupil committees, we encourage all pupils to contribute to the life of our school and to participate in strategic decision-making. They are motivated to make choices that positively impact their school, community, country, and the wider world. Our Celebration of Learning sessions appreciate the multicultural nature of our area and capital city, fostering respectful and caring pupils who celebrate their differences.
At Ysgol Treganna we take pride in our identity and our curriculum, which celebrates our languages, histories, culture, and environment. We are proud of our pupils’ creativity and curiosity, and high expectations are the foundation of our school’s curriculum.
Collaborating with all stakeholders
We have collaborated with all our stakeholders to ensure that the 4 purposes are an integral part of our vision and that the pupils, staff, parents, and governors are a key part of the process of creating our new curriculum.
We started the process of planning our new curriculum by holding discussions with the pupils, staff, parents, and governors on:
- Why? Why are we focusing on these skills? Why are we introducing this concept? Why are we presenting these experiences? Why did we target these skills?
- The learning journey. How will the pupils learn? How will the pupils travel along their learning continuum? How can we ensure purposeful learning experiences that target the individual pupil? What does the individual pupil need to progress?
- The deep learning. How can we ensure that there is depth and understanding in the learning? How can we ensure that our pupils have in-depth knowledge and a strong understanding? How can we ensure that all children are challenged?
- Progress. How can we ensure that all pupils make progress? How will we measure this progress from the perspective of our new curriculum?
Our School Curriculum
- At Ysgol Treganna we aim to develop confident, ambitious, informed, and creative learners.
- Our main priorities are enabling our learners to realise the four purposes and equip them for ongoing learning.
- The Curriculum for Wales guidance is a clear statement of what is important in developing a broad and balanced education. The four purposes are the shared vision and aspiration for each child and young person.
- We aim to build high expectations and enable all learners to achieve their full potential.
- In Ysgol Treganna we offer a broad and balanced education that enables all learners to make links between the different areas of learning and experience and apply their learning to new situations and contexts.
- We explore what the four purposes mean for all learners, and we strongly believe that curriculum preparation and design should contribute to learners’ development towards the four purposes, rather than trying to fit the headlines of the four purposes into all learning.
- As a school we have a clear understanding of why things are learned and done, curriculum design requires us to reason why specific learning matters and what the essence of that learning is.
- We aim to provide an innovative and challenging curriculum which will inspire our pupils to surpass their potential.
- We support progression along the continuum of learning and ensure their development of knowledge, skills and experiences.
- Our school curriculum is broad and balanced and includes learning opportunities within and across the Areas of Learning and Experience.
- It encompasses the concepts in all of the statements of what matters and provides appropriate progression by the principles of progression.
- It also aligns with the mandatory requirements of teaching Welsh, English and Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE).
- The mandatory elements of Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) and the cross-curricular skills of literacy, numeracy and digital competence are embedded throughout the curriculum.
Curriculum for Wales
The new Curriculum for Wales has been developed to fulfil four key purposes. It aims to produce children who are, or will become:
- Ambitious, capable learners
- Healthy, confident individuals
- Enterprising, creative contributors
- Ethical, informed citizens
The Curriculum for Wales has six areas of learning.
- Expressive arts incorporating art, dance, drama, and digital media, and music. It encourages creativity and critical thinking and include performance.
- Humanities incorporating geography, history, RE, business studies and social studies. It is based on human experiences and also covers Welsh culture.
- Health and wellbeing: this covers the physical, psychological, emotional and social aspects of life, helping students make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing and learn how to manage social situations. It also includes PE.
- Science and technology incorporating biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, and design and technology.
- Mathematics and numeracy: in the early years, this involves learning through play. In later stages, it includes working both independently and collaboratively with others.
- Languages, literacy and communication: this includes Welsh and English, literature and international languages. Welsh language teaching is compulsory (as an additional language for children who don’t use Welsh as their first language.
Assessment and Progress
Effective follow-up and assessment is essential to ensure we achieve our school’s vision.
Assessment and progress are part of every learning and teaching experience at Ysgol Treganna and include self-assessment, peer assessment, teacher feedback and learners’ assessments.
We use a range of evidence-based assessment strategies to enable each individual learner to progress at an appropriate pace. This allows us to create a holistic picture of each child’s progress.
The pupils collaborate with their teachers to understand their progress and to identify the next step in their learning journey.
We challenge the pupils, support them, and reflect on progress over time to measure the progress of groups of learners.
Our school curriculum is supported by the principles of progression which describe what it means for learners to make progress within the 6 areas of learning and experience, and we consider progress in the 6 areas of learning against the What Matter statements.
Our assessment arrangements ensure active engagement between learners and teachers and is based on continuous reflection, what is the next step and what needs to be done to ensure that each child achieves their potential.
Evaluating our Curriculum
Our school curriculum will be continuously reviewed to ensure that it meets the needs of our learners and realizes the vision of our school. Throughout the year a variety of self-evaluation activities will be organized to evaluate our understanding of the effectiveness of our curriculum and the required needs. We will work within our school, across the cluster and in partnership with governors, the regional consortia and the local authority, to ensure a high-quality learning continuum.