Our school curriculum and culture ensures that each and every child can reach their full potential irrespective of starting point or background. It is bespoke to the needs of our children here at Filby focussing on not only subject specific knowledge, skills and understanding underpinning the national curriculum but also in developing our children in the Filby Way – a set of values chosen by all stakeholders of the school: staff, parents, Governors and most importantly, the children.

The Filby Way:

To develop citizens who value education and have an understanding of themselves, each other, their community and the wider world. We are; Respectful. Caring. Inclusive, Aspirational. Responsible.

Educating Respectful citizens:

Respect is fundamental to our school community; not only is it one pillar of our three school rules – ‘Ready, Respectful, Safe’ but we learn to respect different cultures, beliefs or ideas through our humanities teaching as well as nature and our environment by looking after our school grounds and understanding our impact on wider society.

Educating Caring citizens:

Our relatively small size means that we know each other well. Children have opportunities to interact with younger or older peers through whole school events and projects such as assemblies and we reach out to our wider community sharing our work and learning with a local care home.

Educating Inclusive citizens:

Our children understand that they are all different and we explicitly teach awareness of different family setups, cultures and beliefs through our curriculum and assemblies. The children recognise that they all have diverse needs and can tell us how they best like to learn.

Educating Aspirational citizens:

We use the school community and the Primary Futures programme to make children aware of the range of opportunities that exist for them in life; we look to break down gender stereotypes through our career workshops that demonstrate how the right attitude, skills and passion are the pre-requisites for careers, not your gender or background. Our children come from a diverse range of socio-economic family backgrounds and our personalised approach ensures that no child is left behind or disadvantaged. Equally, we encourage those children who have relatively privileged backgrounds to be independent through becoming ‘experts’ in each subject.

Educating Responsible citizens:

Our children know that they are responsible for their own learning; we equip them with the study tools to enable them to be their best. Be it, writing structures to model how to put together an exceptional piece of writing through to children being socially responsible through a restorative justice conversation if things go wrong.

Our children learn to be historians, artists, geographers, designers, scientists and above all learners for life. They can confidently articulate their knowledge, understanding and passion as experts of their own learning and can recall and explain what they need to know next. Our children achieve better than their peers nationally and can celebrate their learning achievements across the curriculum.

We consider mental health to be equally as important as physical health and academic ‘health’ and as such work with families to ensure they are supported and understand how they can help their children develop. Our comprehensive Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (RSHE) taught programme prepares children for both current and later life as well as providing opportunities to collaborate with parents.

We strengthen our curriculum with the ‘Filby 50’ – activities which all our stakeholders have identified to be important experiences that our children should have during their time here at Filby. Furthermore we have a range of extra-curricular offers that can broaden our children’s horizons further such as sailing and archery.

We are a small school with BIG ambitions - at the heart of this are our children. Why not come and take a look?