Inspiring Today to Achieve Tomorrow

How we show Cultural Capital at Crossley Street Primary School

Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours and skills that a child can draw upon, which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence. It is one of the key ingredients a child will use to achieve goals, be a successful citizen in society, their career and the world of work.

Ofsted definition of cultural capital is…

“As part of making the judgment about the quality of education, inspectors will consider the extent to which schools are equipping pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Our understanding of ‘knowledge and cultural capital’ is derived from the following wording in the national curriculum: ‘It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.’ “

At Crossley Street Primary School, we ensure that every child has the opportunity to access a wealth of experiences, through a variety of ways. We endeavour to ensure that all children from Nursery to Year 6 have the opportunity to make regular visits to the surrounding community and beyond. We plan for our lessons and extra-curricular activities to be broad and enriching. We believe that learning from first-hand experience is very powerful and provides lasting impact. This could include educational visits, visiting speakers and experts in a variety of fields and special events, including Young University.

All classes regularly take part in educational visits, throughout the school year, such as, visits to the local park, places of worship, museums, sports competitions, art galleries and theatres, just to name a few. Often visits link to our topics, for example, children have visited the Leeds City Museum, as part of a history topic on Ancient Egypt. Children studying plants and the environment have visited RHS Harlow Carr Gardens, to understand different conditions needed to grow healthy plants. Children have taken part in a skipping festival with local primary schools to showcase their talents. Children in the school choir attend Wetherby’s Christmas markets and experience performing in front of a live audience. All children have the opportunity to watch a pantomime, broadening their experiences of live theatre.

In addition, we invite experts into our school to work with our children, including poets, actors, artists, musicians, dancers and representatives from local services. For example, during PE lessons, we use a range of external providers who bring expertise and specialisms, in areas such as rock wall climbing, archery, curling, fencing and cheerleading, to name a few. Experts inspire our children to learn through sharing their passion for their subject area, which can raise our children’s aspirations for their future career.

Also, we organise special events, curriculum days and family events to enrich our children’s lives and challenge them to aspire to be people who leave a mark on the world. We also have Young University mornings, which are held 5 times a year, whereby children from Reception to Year 6 gather in their house groups and complete various activities in mixed age groups such as, exploring new cultures, making and tasting different foods, using recycled materials to create something new, stock animation, model making and a play in a day, to name just a few.

We have created ‘50 Things to do Before Leaving Crossley Street’, which every child completes by the end of Year 6. The 50 things are shared out into year groups, from Nursery to Year 6, and are completed throughout the year, such as roll down a really big hill, make a daisy chain, run around in the rain and go on a bug hunt. A photograph is taken of the children completing each activity and is put in their own 50 Things Book, which is sent home at the end of Year 6.

Children are offered the opportunity to take part in different extra-curricular clubs and activities. These offer all children a wonderful opportunity to develop interests and skills. Teachers and support staff also lead clubs each half term, which allows us to offer a range of clubs throughout the week. Clubs that have been offered are: football, running, rounders, dance, art and craft, choir, chess, gardening, card making, and booster classes in maths, reading and SPaG.

Children in Year 5 and again in Year 6 have the opportunity to attend school residentials. The action-packed three days are full of challenge, fun and excitement with outdoor and night-time activities to keep them actively stimulated. It is a wonderful chance for them to develop teamwork skills outside of the classroom in a new environment. The children develop their independence and prepare themselves even more for secondary school life

As well as enhancing children’s experiences through school visits and extra-curricular activities, we focus on meeting the needs of all children in our catchment area. This includes children who are from affluent homes, but whose families are time-poor, which is why one element of our school ethos is opportunities to ‘be a child’. This enables children to have time to play, for example playing football games on the field at lunchtime, playing board games such as during our extra-curricular chess club and opportunities to take risks, like climbing trees at breaktime. These all encompass our aims at Crossleys Street.

You can see the following examples of our wide cultural capital opportunities on our Class Pages:

● Educational visits linked to our topics

● Celebrating different cultures, traditions and faiths

● Learning about people in our community

● Planning and running charity events with the help of school council

● Bringing financial skills to the primary curriculum workshops in UKS2

● Supporting our local community

● Embracing our local environment

● Learning about animal welfare during KS2 Countryside Day

● Appreciation and love for music and theatre

Here is just one example of cultural capital in each year group. Have a look on each class page to see more photographic examples.