Cultural Capital and Visits

Curriculum visits planned for 2025

The rights and dignity of our children are at the heart of everything we do, every decision we and they make and every driver for making progress and helping our children to develop as responsible, valued global citizens who want to make a positive contribution to their and our world.

In our school, we provide our children with the cultural capital to enable them to function as effective citizens in our global society.

As a Rights Respecting School we hold the UNICEF Statement that ‘Childhood in itself is a right, worthy of protection in every nation’.

We know that every child who joins our school will have their own knowledge and experiences that will link to their culture and wider family. This may include languages, beliefs, traditions, cultural and family heritage, interests, travel and work.

Research shows that when children and families’ cultures are valued, both the child’s experience of learning and progress can benefit (Husain et al, 2018 p4 and Gazzard, E 2018 in Chalmers, H and Crisfield, E 2019).

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

Cultural capital gives power. It helps children achieve their goals, become successful and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having wealth or financial capital. Cultural capital is having the assets that give children the desire to aspire and achieve social mobility regardless of their starting point.

OFSTED define Cultural capital as;

“As part of making the judgement 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 essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing then to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.’

In our school we aim to build upon what children already know and understand, and provide opportunities for them to experience situations which they may not have had previous experience of. We believe that gradually widening their exposure to experiences and culture as they progress through school is an important step in promoting their ongoing success. This will enable our children to engage in rich and engaging learning throughout the curriculum and meet new challenges with courage and purpose. We plan carefully for children to have progressively richer experiences as they journey through our school so that as they grow and develop, their ability to meet the challenges they encounter will be a positive experience for them.

These can be seen in the table below, although the experiences noted are not exhaustive. We will endeavour to always go with the interests of our children and look for every opportunity for them to experience.