‘Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all’ – Aristotle

At Willow Lane, we believe in the power of education to transform lives. We take a holistic approach to child development, which focuses on the mind, body and soul. This is the foundation of all that we do. We recognise that children spend many of their waking hours in school and that we are privileged to work with our children, families and the wider community to change and enhance lives. We celebrate the wide diversity of the backgrounds, beliefs, talents and interests of our learners. We know learning happens in communities and empowers them; as a school at the heart of its community, we understand and respect the positive impact we can have.

So what does this look like in our school? Visitors will see busy classrooms full of energetic children engaged purposefully in their learning. They will hear children talking enthusiastically about their learning as they grapple with new ideas and knowledge. Visitors will experience English lessons that start with a work of art, brilliant stories or film clips; history lessons steeped in drama and children handling artefacts; geography lessons that begin with educational visits and fieldwork; science lessons happening around our woodland, vegetable beds or pond; children practising for sports competitions; art and music projects being designed for display in the city centre; or children coding apps and games. In short, we work hard create a warm, inclusive and enriching school environment- a place our children are excited to attend every day.

More detail for each year group and subject is provided in the documents below. Please note our school curriculum is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our children and to ensure that it remains informed by best practice and is of the highest quality. As such, we have recently invested in updating our curriculum and some subjects require further work to meet the full expectations set out in this document so there remains some variation in curriculum presentation and design. Subject curriculums for science, geography, art and design, and design and technology follow our implementation principles. We expect the full curriculum to meet the aims of this document by September 2023. To find out more about the curriculum talk to the class teacher or contact the deputy headteacher (d.webster@willow.lancs.sch.uk).