A bespoke curriculum with Maestro
Craig Steel has been using Maestro since 2019 to develop a curriculum with remarkable localisation and engagement opportunities for the children. During my visit, Mr Steel explained that staff were able to use Maestro to support the fundamentals of their curriculum design, but ultimately, they recognised an abundance of opportunities to tailor individual lessons and make them completely bespoke to their community, their school and their children.
‘Maestro was fundamental in ensuring that we were covering what we needed to cover, giving us the confidence to take our curriculum design further, knowing that we weren’t creating additional content and depth at the cost of any core skills or knowledge.’
Craig Steel, Headteacher
Kibblesworth Academy have achieved a perfect balance with a curriculum that meets all their requirements and, most importantly, the children’s. Developing a curriculum is an extremely daunting task. Not only do schools need to consider whether they are covering all programmes of study from the national curriculum, but they also need to identify knowledge and skill objectives, a clear sequence of learning and be able to articulate exactly what they are teaching, why they are teaching it and how it fits into the wider school curriculum plan. And undoubtedly, the most important aspect of any curriculum design is ensuring that children are completely engaged in their learning and empowering them to use their imaginations.
A positive impact on children
Mr Steel went on to explain that the children have been able to make connections between what they are learning in the classroom and life beyond school. The children researched servicemen and women who had died in battle during World War One and World War Two and presented their findings to the community and the family members of the fallen soldiers. Using the knowledge and skills framework on Maestro, the children were able to develop a depth of knowledge that made them feel like experts in history. As Mr Steel said, ‘Through this unit, and others like it, the children see themselves as historians, and have developed the skills and knowledge to excel at secondary school’. Being able to take learning beyond the classroom while still building fundamental knowledge is an exceptional use of the Cornerstones curriculum.
Localising the curriculum
With teaching timetables having little room for manoeuvre, I wanted to know more about how the school successfully integrated localisation opportunities. Mr Steel explained that once the teachers were sure the curriculum delivered the required skills and knowledge using Maestro, they were able to make it meaningful within their community. This was done by basing work in their local context, which gave research tasks real meaning, and working with visitors and experts to deepen children’s understanding of key events.
Kibblesworth have worked with their community as much as possible. This included working with their local community centre, parish council, members of the armed forces and local historians. The accumulation of this knowledge was presented to the community and stakeholders. Mr Steel enthused that the children engaging with the knowledge they had learned in such a meaningful way gave them the confidence to excel with this project.
What did Ofsted think?
I asked if their bespoke curriculum design had stood up to an Ofsted inspection. Mr Steel detailed how in their most recent inspection, the school was asked questions as part of each deep dive that looked at how the curriculum was designed, what they had decided to teach, when they planned to teach it and when they knew it had been taught. With the aid of Maestro, subject leaders had the confidence to articulate their curriculum design, using the handy functionality to demonstrate where the content was planned to be taught. Mr Steel explained what they found to be particularly useful was ‘to be able to not only show where we intended to teach objectives, but to demonstrate where they had been taught, and to be able to use the functionality within Maestro to triangulate this with the content in books and planning. It gave both the subject lead and inspector confidence that our curriculum was well sequenced and had the required coverage in place.’
Summary
Ultimately, it can be seen that Kibblesworth Academy has been exceptional at providing the best learning opportunities and truly putting their children at the heart of the curriculum. The passion that radiated throughout the staff was very clear to the school’s adviser upon visiting the school, as the children’s work also showed. Listening to them discuss the knowledge in their workbooks with such passion was a true reflection of the work the staff had put into their curriculum. Craig Steel offers the following advice to other schools:
‘Be ambitious. It’s amazing how far the children can take their learning when they are curious and fully engaged with the topic. The outcomes from our Britain at War unit far exceeded our expectations because of the level of engagement, which was partly due to the links to the local community and partly due to the high-quality resources and ideas that acted as a jumping-off point. If you can tie the learning into the local context and community and make it real to the children, it’s surprising how much more you can achieve.’
Craig Steel, Headteacher
We would like to thank all the children and teaching staff at Kibblesworth Academy for inviting us to visit them and join in their celebrations at the end of the project. You should all be very proud of the amazing work you have created!
