Challenge
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At Parish, we are dedicated to ensuring that all children are given the support and opportunities required to meet, and indeed, exceed their potential. We continually seek to identify more able and high potential pupils throughout their time at Parish in order to nurture and enhance their skills, whether this is be in the core and curriculum subjects or through extra-curricular areas. Through our partnership with NACE, Optimus Education and our fellow trust schools, we can collaborate in order to challenge and extend all children in their educational journeys.
We believe that all pupils are entitled to be stretched and challenged in their learning. Raising the expectations of our most able pupils has a positive effect on the overall learning experience of all pupils in our care. This core principle is achieved by teachers incorporating a range of key elements, which are embedded throughout all curriculum learning. These elements include: an emphasis on higher order questions which seek to challenge and extend children’s thinking; a focus on rich, meaningful and exploratory tasks which allow children to establish connections between different areas of the curriculum; regular opportunities for collaborative and self-directed learning as well as regularly applying a range of well-researched differentiation strategies.
Examples of this core principle of stretch and challenge for all have been embedded throughout our curriculum. These include the implementation of a mastery mathematics curriculum with a great emphasis on reasoning and problem solving; a broad and investigative science curriculum focusing on practical discovery and enquiry skills; literacy learning which prioritises high-quality modelling, exploratory talk and discussion in order to inform and support high-quality meaningful writing; an RE curriculum which incorporates broad and open questions to encourage pupils to make connections between religious teaching and life situations as well as the implementation of schemes of work such as Philosophy for Children to enhance and extend deeper thinking skills and higher order questioning.
Our pupils are also provided with regular opportunities to advance their talents through a variety of extra-curricular clubs and activities. These clubs, run by teachers and external agencies, allow the staff - who are themselves passionate in these areas - to further identify and nurture the pupils' talents and, where appropriate, help the children and their families access specialist pathways to move on to the next level. Examples of the extra-curricular clubs include: advanced reading groups, BYMT music lessons, girls and boys football clubs, mixed tag-rugby training, mixed cricket club, netball club, chess club, science investigation club and chamber choir, to name but a few.
Similarly, our pupils are regularly given opportunities to showcase their talents - both academic and extracurricular - through a range of assemblies, competitions and events. To date, Parish students have taken part in: trust-wide poetry slams and debating competitions; trust-wide science and humanity quizzes and fieldwork days; science and technology workshops focusing on STEM, chemistry, physics and computing; trust-wide maths challenges as well as speaking and presenting competitions. These opportunities are regularly reviewed, enhanced and are ever expanding to offer all Parish children the opportunity to both showcase and extend their talents.
In addition to the various academic enrichment opportunities offered at Parish, we are lucky enough to compete in a range of sporting tournament and fixtures throughout the year – including: borough-wide football and cricket leagues and associated football and cricket tournaments, netball competitions, swimming gala, quad-kids athletics, tag-rugby and cross country - to name but a few. These opportunities also provide our pupils with the impetus to challenge themselves against pupils from local schools in order to experience competition and success.
In recent years, due to the success and dedication of those involved within these competitions, a number of Parish children have advanced from these local tournaments into regional competitions, where they have competed with great levels of success. Particular examples of Parish’s recent sporting success include: finishing joint first place in the Bromley Girls Cricket Competition and later finishing 2nd place in the London Youth Games, finishing joint-first place in the Bromley Primary Schools Mixed Cricket League, winning the Bromley Tag-Rugby Finals and later finishing 4th place in the London Youth Games, winning the Large School Competition for Year 3, 4,5 and 6 in the Bromley Primary Schools Cross Country Finals, winning the Bromley Quad-kids Athletics Competition and later finishing 2nd place in the South London finals. A number of Parish pupils have used the platform provided by the school in order to be selected for various external representative teams. Members of the school sporting staff maintain a range of trusted contacts - across a variety of sports - in order to provide talented pupils with the pathways and opportunities to advance, develop and pursuit their sporting potential.
Promoting Challenge Documents
Promoting Challenge in Art and Design
Promoting Challenge in English
Promoting Challenge in Geography
Promoting Challenge in History