Personal Development

Cultural capital is defined as the growth of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a pupil can draw upon and which demonstrate their cultural awareness, knowledge and ability; it is one of the key ingredients a pupil utilises to be successful in society, their career and the world of work. 

We recognise that for pupils to aspire and be successful in the wider areas of their lives, they need to be given rich and sustained opportunities to develop their cultural capital. We do this in many ways, for example, through our curriculum, extra-curricular activities, trips, visits and careers activities.

Our curriculum extends beyond the National Curriculum and includes a wide range of experiences and opportunities within and beyond the school day. Our specialist club programme is designed to link with and enhance the school curriculum for all age groups from Reception to Year 6.

All clubs are run by experienced and qualified teachers or coaches who have a passion to inspire pupils and help them develop new skills. Our program is an ever-changing and broad offer and is adjusted in response to pupil views. We include sports, science, art, music, dance, computing and cooking, and we aim to have a club for everyone.
 

Trips and visits take place throughout the school year, in all year groups linked to our learning challenges. If appropriate we also invite external speakers to deliver talks and workshops.
 

A programme of assemblies based on our values-based ethos helps to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and provide clear guidance for pupils on how to grow up to be the best person they possibly can be. Alongside the values assemblies, each term pupils also take part in:

• Safeguarding assemblies
• Attendance assemblies
• Sports celebration assemblies
• Music performance assemblies
• Rights Respecting assemblies 
• Eco Warrior assemblies
• Accelerated Reader assemblies    

Pupils participate in a wide range of musical activities beyond the National Curriculum. Over 200 pupils in Years 3 -6 learn to play a musical instrument. Those who are learning a musical instrument or sing are given the opportunity to perform. 

Forest Schools is designed to provide opportunities for outdoor learning in a natural environment. As a school, we are very fortunate to have our own forest school area and teachers trained to deliver the Forest Schools programme. Pupils in our Nursery and Reception age groups have regular forest school sessions. We aim to offer blocks of forest school to our children. Each session is designed around the needs of the pupils taking part and offers opportunities to address all aspects of personal development.

Learn more about Forest School at Atkinson Road

Pupils have many opportunities to become a leader in school. These include elected class and deputy councillors, playground leaders, eco-warriors and house captains.

At Atkinson Road, we have worked to identify and overcome the barriers that children and young people from families with fewer financial resources face. We have had an external audit of our school which looked at many different aspects of school life and involved children, parents, carers, staff and governors.

In this way, we have explored the most effective way to spend our pupil premium allocation to ensure all our children have free and equal access to a rich school experience. We provide and wash our free PE kits, subsidise school uniforms and school trips where we provide all children with the same packed lunches to take. We are very casual about themed days e.g. World Book Day so our families are not expected to buy unnecessarily expensive items. Free books are regularly sent home e.g. as Christmas presents, prizes and as part of our parent workshops.