The Art and Design Curriculum 

at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art”

At St Robert Bellarmine, through a high-quality art and design education, we aim to inspire a love of art in our children and an understanding of how art and design reflects and has shaped our history and heritage, and contributes to the culture, creativity and richness of societies all over the world. It is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and experiences to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. Our intention is to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learn about art and artists across cultures and through history. As they progress through school, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design.

We will assure that the National Curriculum for Art and Design is met by ensuring that all of our pupils experience a wide breadth of study that includes: art appreciation and taking inspiration; the generating and developing of ideas along with application and mastering of techniques.

Our Intended Art and Design Curriculum

We aim for the art and design curriculum content to be remembered in the long term as our basic principles are that learning only takes place if there is a change in the long-term memory. Our art and design curriculum takes a mastery approach. By which we mean pupils master key concepts before moving on to the next topic.

The ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember forms the basis of our long-term planning for progression. This includes the ‘substantive concepts’ of: artists, styles and periods; media and materials; process; colour theory; effects and techniques; emotions and visual language. These concepts are vertically integrated so that the children revisit them in different contexts deepening their knowledge and understanding of them in each year group as they progress through school. And they are taught through the techniques of: drawing, painting, sculpture, printing, collage, architecture and mixed media.

Curriculum breadth for art and design outlines the core knowledge for each topic around which teachers have developed a coherent and deliberately sequenced curriculum to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge and understanding by building upon prior knowledge.

Curriculum depth in art and design allows for children to grow in their knowledge by first remembering more, progressing to knowing more which they can then draw on as they create, reason and explain their own works of art and design.

We understand how important academic and subject specific vocabulary is in the acquisition of knowledge. Consequently, teachers ensure that this is planned for and taught rigorously throughout art and design topics.

We determine progress as 'remembering more and knowing more'. We believe that when new knowledge and existing knowledge connect in pupils’ minds, this gives rise to understanding. 

We look for children, as their knowledge and understanding develops, to show that they can make connections, draw parallels and use increasingly sophisticated explanations which draw upon their art and design knowledge.

Our Enacted Art and Design Curriculum

Our curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback for our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Cognitive science tells us that in order for pupils to have a greater depth of understanding and sustain mastery they must first master the basics, which takes time.

A coherent and deliberately sequenced art and design curriculum ensures that we practise things repeatedly so children get better at them, and we revise things on a regular basis so that they don’t forget them.

Our Learnt Art and Design Curriculum

 The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• How well are our pupils coping with the curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is they remember more and are fluent in it. Activities are planned for pupils to combine this remembered knowledge and fluency with the opportunities to create, reason and demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.