Eastgate Primary School: The Curriculum

The curriculum is intended to provide a sound grounding in the essentials of literacy and numeracy together with a broad range of study in other areas, to encourage the personal, social, moral and spiritual development of the children.

In Reception the children follow the foundation stage. The following areas are covered: personal and social development; language and literacy; mathematics; knowledge and understanding of the world; and creative development.

All children in years one to six study the National Curriculum subjects.
Core subjects are English, Mathematics, Science, and Information and Communication Technology.
Foundation subjects are History, Geography, Art, Design and Technology, Music, Physical Education and Religious Education.

In addition to the lessons the children experience in the classroom the school encourages a range of activities both in school and outside. In the last couple of years children have had Zulu classes in school, visits from local groups including the fire service and police, students from the college of West Anglia and KES have worked in school and teachers from Park High and KES have worked with us. Children have visited a range of sites including the Sea Life Centre in Hunstanton, Butterfly Farm, a Victorian school and residential experience that allows adventure activities to take place in very well supervised surroundings.

The school also has a pupil led school council. The current members are representatives from each of the junior classes plus two children who represent the infants. The council elect a new chair and secretary and meet with the headteacher once a fortnight.

We also provide after school clubs which change with the seasons. In recent times these have included football, netball, chess, orchestra,drama and an infants 'games' club.

There are three phase groups; the infants - year R, year 1 and year 2; the lower juniors - years 3 and 4; and the upper juniors - year 5 and 6. The infant classes are single age classes with a maximum of 30 children. In each of the last five years the school has been oversubscribed in reception by 25%. At year 3 children from Highgate Infants School join us into one of three parallel classes of children in years 3 and 4. The teachers work together as a team and plan work for the three classes. A similar pattern continues into three parallel year 5 and 6 classes. In addition to this the children in the year 5/6 classes are placed into ability sets for Maths and English.