Building the Kingdom: Curriculum Design & CPD

At St Augustine’s Priory, we are a hub for curriculum design for local Catholic schools. Throughout the academic year 2019 - 2020 is Building the Kingdom, a five-day course run by EducareM on contextualising the National Curriculum.

Building the Kingdom is an inspirational curriculum design programme which clearly defines curriculum intent, implementation and assesses the impact on pupil learning. We host headteachers and teachers from five different schools; Saint Christina’s School, Mount Carmel Catholic Primary School, St Anselm’s Catholic Primary School, Our Lady of the Visitation Catholic Primary School and St Vincent’s R C Primary School. Four are state schools with high pupil premiums.

Aims

To develop a highly creative and innovative primary Catholic curriculum, Building the Kingdom is a response to the challenge of forming young people to be transformed themselves for the transformation of society. It provides training and support for governors, head teachers, senior leaders and classroom teachers in the following areas; the vision and mission of the Catholic Church in education, spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, governor training – understanding the role of governors in Catholic schools, supporting the head teacher in their role as a Catholic leader, formation and development for leadership at senior and middle levels, review and evaluation of the Catholic life of the school, supporting schools before and after OFSTED.

Impact

As hosts, we have significantly reduced the cost of this programme for participating schools, because we are not raising our usual letting fee for hiring the room for a day. We also provide lunch, refreshments, and all printing costs. Schools in the Deanery who could not afford this are subsidised by us in this way.  

A total of 2,262 pupils from the six schools benefit from the creative and innovative curriculum delivered through Building the Kingdom. The curriculum allows pupils to engage with big questions on purpose and meaning and helps pupils to develop their advocacy skills for change for those in the greatest need in society. Teachers can apply the radical challenges of Catholic Social Teaching to learning, raise critical and higher order thinking skills across the curriculum and develop a wide range of creative strategies for moving learning into action. The course allows teachers to work with a team of highly experienced curriculum developers. It has a proven impact on outcomes for all groups of learners. 

The main message of Building the Kingdom is that we want pupils from the schools attending to become leaders who transform the world, through independent thinking, creative thinking, pro-activeness, and deep understanding of others, we hope the curriculum that is taught, will make the world a better place. At every stage the impact is on teachers asking how their pupils can go higher and deeper.

Frequency

There are five training days throughout the academic year. The sessions last a full school day and are diarised in connection with the liturgical calendar.