Grove School

Grove school is an exciting place to learn. Located in Handsworth, we recognise and celebrate the rich cultual and religious backgrounds of our community through our Thinking Skills curriculum. We want every child to enjoy school, learn and achieve. We firmly believe every child has a talent and our job is to discover and nurture each child's talent.

Our inquiry based curriculum uses Handsworth and Birmingham as focal points to recognise and celebrate our cultural and religious diversity. We believe the education of every child must provide not only knowledge but also skills; our aim is to develop character, critical thinking and leadership skills in every child. We aim to find out and nurture the talent of each as they journey through our school.

Our work with parents and carers is vital to ensure every child learns and achieves. We value the contributions parents make in helping us understand their child and offer many opportunities for parents to engage in the life of the school. We provide parents and carers with regular information about the progress their child is making.

Our work with parents and carers is vital to ensure every child learns and achieves. We value the contributions parents make in helping us understand their child and offer many opportunities for parents to engage in the life of the school. We provide parents and carers with regular information about the progress their child is making. Strong values underpin the work of the school; children talk confidently about the Grove Expectations and how they meet these in their daily lives.

“Every child has equal entitlement to the possibility of high achievement.” We want the philosophy of Grove school to be one of inquiry, this will pervade the work of pupils in the classrooms and the work of teachers professionally in school. The principles of the curriculum are:

• The curriculum is challenging and coherent. The goal of the curriculum is a deep understanding and engagement in learning. Enrichment permeates the curriculum and is available to all pupils through the use of visits, visitors, good cross curricular links and out of school activities.
• The curriculum is creative and responsive. The teachers use knowledge of child development, the sequence of acquisition of skills and the inquiry philosophy of the school as guiding principles to use the medium term curriculum to prepare creative and innovative short term plans. The school places value on the initiatives which teachers take to respond to individuals in the class and to reflect their interests and questions in the daily work of the class. Teachers communicate across year groups and will spend time looking at curriculum developments in their own year group and beyond. Staff annually invite the head teacher to observe an aspect of curriculum work they feel is very successful and shows high quality curriculum and good pupil self evaluation. The creative work is collated into an innovative curriculum exemplars document used in school for training new staff.
• The curriculum supports the whole child. Every teacher at Grove school accepts responsibility for balancing social, psychological and emotional growth with academic learning. At Grove we believe that the curriculum needs to be cognitively challenging, authentic, meaningful and social. The curriculum respects the family, and cultural and racial diversity.
• The curriculum is integrated and holistic. Children are encouraged to use multiple ways of knowing and expressing their knowledge. Subject matter is taught in ways that blend the different curriculum areas and allow meaningful application of skills gained in one domain to the exploration of another domain. Timetables allow for specific subject teaching in years 2 – 6 as well as integrated approaches to the curriculum.
• The curriculum is developmental. Every subject area is taught in a developmentally appropriate way respecting the salient characteristics of both the age group and the individuals in the class. The level of curriculum challenge is that pupils will make good progress through the curriculum in all core and foundation subjects, to achieve age related expectations.