Our Curriculum Vision

At Ashdon, we believe a small school can offer a big education. Our curriculum is built to be ambitious for every child, rooted in our village and the countryside around it, and deliberately broad — so that children leave us in Year 6 knowing more, remembering more, and believing more of themselves than when they arrived.

Everything we teach is shaped by our three values — Challenge, Care and Celebrate — and by four curriculum drivers, chosen because they answer what our particular children need:

• Exposure, Opportunities and Aspirations — broadening horizons and igniting curiosity through diverse experiences

• Reading and Oracy — developing strong communication and comprehension across all learning

• Physical Development — building confident movement, co-ordination and early writing foundations

• Resilience and Respect — fostering the characteristics of effective learning

How our curriculum is organised

We teach Reception to Year 6 in three mixed-age classes:

• Mars — Reception and Year 1

• Saturn — Year 2 and Year 3

• Jupiter — Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6

In Reception we follow the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage framework. From Year 1 to Year 6 we follow the National Curriculum.

Because our classes are mixed-age, each class works on a rolling cycle so that no child repeats content and every child receives full curriculum coverage. Mars and Saturn follow a two-year cycle; Jupiter follows a three-year cycle.

Subjects are taught as distinct disciplines, each with its own progression, and cross-curricular links are made only where they genuinely deepen understanding rather than for their own sake. Building vocabulary runs as a thread through all of it.

What we use to plan

Our curriculum is our own, built around our three mixed-age classes and their rolling cycles. To support it we draw on established, well-sequenced published programmes, which our teachers adapt so that content falls in the right order for Mars, Saturn and Jupiter rather than for a single-year-group school.

• Phonics — Monster Phonics

• Handwriting — Letter-Join

• English — Hamilton Trust, Fred's Teaching and PlanBee

• Mathematics — White Rose Maths

• Science — our own planning, with PlanBee and Hamilton Trust

• History and Geography — our own planning, with PlanBee

• Art — our own planning, with PlanBee

• Design and Technology — our own planning

• Computing and French — Kapow

• RSHE and PSHE — Kapow, with My HappyMind (and My HappyMind Belong)

• Religious Education — the agreed scheme used across the Saffron Academy Trust

• PE — Get Set 4 PE

• Music — our own planning, delivered by our specialist music teacher#

• French - Kapow (KS2 only)

CHALLENGE — what we teach

Our curriculum is designed so that pupils:

• Develop as confident, curious learners who make strong progress from their own starting points, whatever those starting points are

• Build secure knowledge through carefully sequenced learning that runs coherently from Reception to Year 6

• Experience a genuinely broad curriculum in which every subject is valued in its own right

• Develop the cultural capital, resilience and independence to thrive at secondary school and beyond

• Grow a real love of reading through high-quality texts, systematic phonics and daily reading opportunities

• Understand how to live safe, healthy and happy lives as responsible members of their community

CARE — how we teach

• Sequenced planning. Learning is planned to build on what children already know, with deliberate attention to progression across our mixed-age classes.

• Learning that builds. Each subject has its own planned sequence across our rolling cycles, so that teachers know what children covered before a unit and what follows it, and learning builds rather than repeats.

• Cognitive science in practice. We build in retrieval, spacing and interleaving so that knowledge sticks, rather than being met once and forgotten.

• Talk at the centre. Teachers model their thinking out loud, and children are expected to explain, justify and reason aloud across every subject.

• Quality First Teaching. Adaptive teaching in every lesson comes first, supported by targeted intervention where a child needs it. Our SENCO works alongside class teachers so that every child can access the full curriculum.

• Wellbeing taught explicitly. My HappyMind and our RSHE curriculum mean emotional literacy is taught, not assumed.

• Knowing every child. With small classes, teachers know each child’s strengths and gaps precisely, and plan accordingly.

CELEBRATE — what our pupils achieve

Our curriculum ensures that pupils:

• Reach ambitious standards in reading, writing and mathematics, ready for their next stage of education

• Read widely, fluently and for pleasure

• Talk articulately about what they have learnt, making connections across subjects

• Benefit from mixed-age learning, where younger children learn from older peers and older children learn by explaining

• Take visible pride in their work and their school

• Leave Ashdon with experiences beyond our village that widen what they believe is possible for themselves

How we assess

Assessment at Ashdon exists to inform teaching, not to generate data. Day to day, teachers assess through questioning, discussion and live marking, adapting the lesson as it happens.

Each term, children in Years 1 to 6 sit short standardised assessments alongside their teacher’s own judgement:

• PiRA — Progress in Reading Assessment

• PUMA — Progress in Understanding Mathematics Assessment

• GaPS — Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

These are published by Hodder Education and nationally standardised, which means we can compare how our children are doing against thousands of others of the same age, not just against each other. In a school our size, that external reference point matters.

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Understanding a standardised score. A standardised score of 100 is the national average for a child of that age. Most children score between 85 and 115. The score accounts for a child’s age in months, so younger children in a year group are not disadvantaged by being compared with classmates almost a year older. We also look at reading age, maths age and spelling age, which give a plain measure of where a child is working regardless of which year group they are in.

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A note on mid-year scores. These assessments cover the whole year’s curriculum from the outset, so the autumn paper includes content children will not meet until the summer. It is entirely normal for a score to dip mid-year and recover by the summer term. A single score is a snapshot, not a verdict — we always read it alongside what we see in a child’s books and in the classroom.

Writing is assessed by teachers against the National Curriculum expectations for each year group. Judgements about writing are the most open to interpretation, so writing is moderated externally around six times a year — roughly once every half-term — with teachers from a partner school, joined at some sessions by other schools from the Uttlesford Consortium. Books are compared and standards agreed across schools, which means our assessment of writing is never based on one teacher’s view of a small cohort.

Children also take the statutory national assessments: the Phonics Screening Check in Year 1, the Multiplication Tables Check in Year 4, and the Key Stage 2 SATs in Year 6.

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Assessment in the foundation subjects. Knowing whether children have genuinely remembered what we taught them matters as much in history as it does in mathematics. Beginning with history and geography, children answer three key questions at the start of a unit and the same three at the end. The comparison shows teachers precisely what has been learnt and retained, and what needs revisiting — and it shows children their own progress, which is often the more powerful of the two.

We report to parents formally twice a year at parents’ evenings and through an annual written report, and informally whenever you need to talk to us.

Broadening the curriculum

What happens on paper is only part of an Ashdon education.

Safari, our Nature School. Every class spends time learning outdoors across the year — building, cooking, exploring and taking sensible risks in our grounds and the countryside around us.

Our library. Recently rebuilt with grant and PTA funding, our library has reading nooks, a world map floor, a quiet sensory space and hundreds of new books.

Jaffle. Our reading and wellbeing dog is available to children throughout the week. Reading to Jaffle has transformed confidence for children who once found reading aloud daunting.

Clubs. Running Club, Cooking Club, Art Club and Reading with Jaffle run across the week, and our wraparound provision offers breakfast and after-school care.

Music. Music is taught by our specialist music teacher, who plans and delivers lessons across all three classes. Every child listens, composes, performs and appraises — music is part of the curriculum, not an optional extra.

Sport and competition. PE is taught by our teachers alongside a specialist sports coach, following the Get Set 4 PE programme, and covers everything from gymnastics and dance to outdoor adventure activities and parkour. Our older pupils swim across the summer term. Despite our size, our children compete regularly against much larger schools — and hold their own.

Community. Monthly Open the Book sessions led by parishioners from All Saints Church, whole-school Christmas and Easter services, visits to the mobile library, and our annual Fun Run keep the school woven into village life.

House system. Elm, Oak and Ash compete for house points, celebrated every Friday in our Celebration Assembly.

Curriculum documents

Click the images below to open our curriculum documents. If you would like a paper copy of anything on this page, please ask at the school office and we will provide one free of charge.​​