Intent

At Sherford Vale Primary School, our Art and Design curriculum nurtures creativity, imagination, and visual literacy, helping every child reach their potential. Pupils are encouraged to think and work as artists and designers, developing confidence, resilience, and a willingness to take creative risks as part of a lifelong love of learning.

Art is valued as a powerful form of expression and cultural understanding. Pupils explore diverse artists, styles, and traditions from across time and place, ensuring all children see themselves reflected in the curriculum. This inclusive approach fosters empathy, respect, and aspiration while celebrating global creativity beyond the Western canon.

The curriculum is broad, ambitious, and aligned with the National Curriculum (2014), structured around five interconnected strands: generating ideas, using sketchbooks, making skills, knowledge of artists, and evaluating and analysing. These strands support coherent progression in skills, knowledge, and critical thinking, while enabling pupils to discover and develop individual talents. 

Implementation

Art and Design is taught through a carefully sequenced, progressive curriculum that supports both academic achievement and personal development. Learning is delivered weekly or through an alternating half-term model with Design and Technology, giving pupils time to practise, revisit, and consolidate skills.

A spiral curriculum allows key concepts and techniques to be revisited with increasing depth, promoting knowledge retention, resilience, and sustained progress. Lessons are inclusive by design, with adaptive strategies ensuring all pupils, including those with SEND, can access and succeed.

Teaching uses scaffolding, multisensory approaches, collaboration, and independent exploration. Formative assessment through questioning, observation, discussion, and reflection makes learning responsive and supportive. Cross-curricular links strengthen understanding and foster teamwork, curiosity, and engagement across the wider curriculum.

Impact

As a result of the Art and Design curriculum, pupils develop strong artistic skills, secure knowledge and grow creative confidence. They show aspiration, resilience and pride in their work and can reflect thoughtfully, communicate ideas clearly and evaluate their own and others’ outcomes.
Assessment evidence, including quizzes, written responses, annotations and creative work, demonstrates that pupils retain and apply knowledge and skills over time. Pupils leave Sherford Vale as confident, empathetic and inspired learners who are well-prepared for the next stage of their education and equipped with the values of HEART: honesty, empathy, aspiration, resilience and teamwork.