At St Osmund's, we are committed to providing and enabling the broadest educational offering and we see the development of cultural capital as central to the development of young citizens, for knowledge, behaviour and skill throughout life. Developing cultural awareness requires us to look beyond the National Curriculum and to plan for enrichment, acquisition of knowledge and understanding of different heritages, values and ideas and also to reach out into the world.
We often have visiting specialists into school, for example our 'Walking Through the Bible' visitor-led specialist input which seeks to develop a personal engagement. We are student-led and see us being responsive to student thought as critical: for example, we are enjoying the fruits of our climate justice group and our eco club as we see character development taking place and the whole school engaging with these issues. We take students out into our locality to enrich learning, for example the River Frome trip, linked to curriculum coverage in geography and an opportunity to make the learning relevant and most memorable.
Every year group has at least one residential trip per year and we prioritise our Pupil Premium students' attendance, funding one trip per key stage. Residentials build in length and intensity, offering a week walking in Scotland and a week in France at key stage 3, for example. We find places within and without our taught curriculum to prioritise personal, social, moral, spiritual, physical and cultural development. Every week sees an array of extra-curricular clubs, out of hours, all provided at no cost to the student by our teachers and external coaches. We see this as an important use of the PE Premium, to enhance access to a wide range of sports. Sitting alongside this are clubs for performance arts, creative arts and other wellbeing opportunities such as yoga and Lego. We share dance, drama and choral output with our wider school community. Our daily act of worship and reflection focuses our whole community on spiritual development of the individual and how one can apply it in life. We call this 'faith in action'.
It is our belief that cultural capital will give our young learners a currency for life that is not financial, the ability to aspire and achieve social mobility. We believe this to be a grounding and thoughtful experience in modern British society.
