At Burnside Primary School, we are committed to providing a purposeful, ambitious, and empowering curriculum that fully prepares learners for the next steps in their educational journey and opens doors to the wider world. Core literacy and numeracy skills lie at the heart of everything we do, inspiring curiosity, critical thinking, and a genuine excitement for learning.
Our curriculum is explicitly built around our school motto, be safe, be smart, be kind, ensuring that every child is supported to thrive, achieve, and belong.
How Our Curriculum Reflects Our Values
Be Safe: We foster a warm, supportive, and structured environment where pupils develop metacognition skills and self-regulation. By understanding how they learn best, taking creative risks, and building emotional resilience, children feel safe to embrace new challenges and thrive.
Be Smart: We maintain high academic ambitions for every child. Core literacy, numeracy, and foundational subject knowledge are taught through a carefully sequenced curriculum that prioritises cumulative knowledge and long-term memory. Children are encouraged to "think hard," recall prior learning, and make meaningful connections to achieve their full potential.
Be Kind: Our curriculum celebrates our local North East heritage and the diverse global community. By embedding significant local, national, and international figures, our children see themselves and their peers represented in their learning. This fosters deep empathy, mutual respect, and a lasting sense of belonging.
Intent & Evidence-Informed Pedagogy
We believe it is our responsibility to show children that a world of possibility awaits them. Our sequential curriculum ensures that substantive knowledge (what we learn) and disciplinary knowledge (how we work as scientists, historians, or artists) are seamlessly integrated to deepen understanding over time.
Underpinned by evidence-informed practice, our teaching strategies are designed around how memory works. We strategically plan regular retrieval opportunities, enabling children to draw on past learning with confidence as they build broader, deeper knowledge.
At Burnside Primary School, we nurture lifelong learners—equipping our children with the knowledge, ambition, and character needed to succeed in secondary school and beyond.