Cultural Capital at Regent Farm

Every child and family who joins the Regent Farm Community will have their own knowledge and experiences that will link to their culture and wider family. This might include: languages, beliefs, traditions, cultural and family heritage.

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 empowers children; it helps them achieve goals, become successful, and supports their aspirations for life. Cultural capital is having assets that give children the desire to aspire and achieve social mobility whatever their starting point.

At Regent Farm First School, children benefit from a carefully planned curriculum that builds on what they understand and know already. We enhance our curriculum with numerous experiences that children might not otherwise have in their lives. We invite professionals into school to meet our children, or take children to new places. Gradually widening children’s experiences as they progress through school is an important step in providing rich and engaging learning across the curriculum. It also helps equip children with skills they need to thrive in our diversity, wonderful world.

Some examples of these experiences include:

• Visiting the local parks and nature reserves.
• Trips to the quayside or beach.
• Visits to different places of workshop and work with the local Reverend.
• Workshops at the range of museums in Newcastle.
• Work with professionals such as historians, landscape gardeners, bankers, engineers, police officers, animal handlers, marine biologists and authors.
• Opportunities in school such as theatre groups, the planetarium, online presentations with Gatorland and learning with Dyson.
• Supporting our partner school in Kenya

The school recognises that there are six key areas of development that are interrelated and cumulatively contribute to the sum of a child’s cultural capital and these are woven into our curriculum:

1. Personal Development
2. Social Development, including political and current affairs awareness
3. Physical Development
4. Spiritual Development
5. Moral Development
6. Cultural Development

 

Each curriculum area also makes its own contribution to children’s cultural capital development and supports SMSC across the school. Subject specific documents are available on the website.