Our Key Concepts

Threading through our curriculum each year will be exposure to key concepts that children will explore to investigate the ‘big idea’. The essential generalisations we intend to present and to communicate and the key concepts we want learners to understand and make their own are:

• Globalisation: Countries, cultures and communities are not cut off from each other. On the contrary, there has been much borrowing, mingling and mutual influence over the centuries between different countries and cultural traditions. Events and trends in one place in the modern world are frequently affected by events and trends elsewhere. You cannot understand your own local world close at hand without seeing it as part of a global system. The global system has a range of interacting sub-systems: ecological, cultural, economic and political. There are benefits, but also dangers and difficulties.
• Humanity: Human beings belong to a single race, the human race. At all times in history and in all cultural traditions, they have had, and continue to have, certain basic tasks, problems, aspirations and needs in common – there is a shared humanity. Because all have the same underlying humanity, all are of equal value. All should be treated fairly and all should have the same basic human rights.
• Identity: To be human is to be rooted in a particular time and place and therefore to be different from most other people. The principal differences are to do with age, class, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, language, nation, race, religion, sexuality and status. They are expressed through different perceptions, narratives, interests, standpoints and customs.  Every individual belongs to a range of different groups, and therefore has a range of different belongings. Also, and partly in consequence, all individuals change and develop over time, as do all cultures, groups and communities.