Cultural capital is the essential knowledge that children need to prepare them for their future success. It is about giving children the best possible start to their early education. Our cultural capital helps form our understanding, knowledge, experiences, thoughts and opinions. It helps us achieve goals, be successful, try different things and share our experiences with others.

Vocabulary

Most children are experienced speakers of the language when they begin school at Deanery but reading the language requires more complex, abstract vocabulary than that used in everyday conversation. We want our children to move beyond everyday words to access general academic and literary words and subject specific words. We want our children to sound like a geographer, historian etc. The size of a pupil’s vocabulary in their early years of schooling (the number and variety of words that the young person knows) is a significant predictor of academic attainment in later schooling and of success in life. Department for Education research suggests that, by the age of seven, the gap in the vocabulary known by children in the top and bottom quartiles is something like 4,000 words (children in the top quartile know around 7,000 words). There is a 10,000 word gap between just passing exams at age 16 and doing well in them. Therefore we need to try to introduce approximately 400 new words per year.

Broader Understanding of the world

Deanery Church of England Primary School is a two form entry school, with a 52 place nursery. At Deanery we believe everyone thrives in a happy, secure and caring environment. It is an essential part of our Christian ethos that peace, love, faith, joy, grace and hope should be the core values that everyone respects and agrees. We do this through the teaching of Jesus. We believe that education, strengthened by faith, is the vehicle with which children can achieve their full potential. Children thrive in our nurturing environment, enhanced by faith, enabling them to attain high standards academically, socially and emotionally. However, we also want our children to understand that there is a very different world outside of our school and indeed our locality. We aim to give children general knowledge within our curriculum as well as knowledge an understanding of what it may be like to live in other areas or countries. We also aim to give our children knowledge of current affairs.

Cultural Experiences

A particularly strong feature is our curriculum which provides a range of learning opportunities through a rich variety of experiences including; visits and trips, residential visits, invited visitors and guests, high levels of sporting engagement, peripatetic provision and Enrichment afternoons which raise the levels of enjoyment, contribute to higher levels of achievement and broaden children’s horizons.

Personal Skills

We are proud of our children who are our greatest ambassadors, they are at the heart of our school, and contribute to our positive school ethos. However, we want to equip them with the personal skills to survive in the real world; we want our children to be kind, caring, resourceful and resilient.