Cultural Capital
"Education must be aimed at creating a wider imagination in the child....the child's mind must be set free." Henry Williamson
Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a student can draw upon and which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence; it is one of the key ingredients a student will draw upon to be successful in society, their career and the world of work.
Cultural capital promotes social mobility and success in our stratified society.
Cultural capital gives a student power. It helps them achieve goals, become successful, and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having wealth or financial capital.
Cultural capital is having assets that give students the desire to aspire and achieve social mobility whatever their starting point.
Through various research studies, it has been proven that is important to instil aspirations and ambitions in pupils at a younger age to further maximise their ambition and engagement with higher education and the wider world. If pupils know what they wish to aspire to do at an earlier age, it can help to focus their educational journey.
At Newbold Church Primary School, our curriculum is designed to further maximise this ambition and drive within our pupils. We achieve this through:
- PSHE Curriculum - Dreams and Goals - As part of the school’s PSHE curriculum, the whole school spend six weeks focusing on a unit called Dreams and Goals. These sessions give the pupils the opportunity to consider their goals for later in life and investigate and plan how they can achieve them.
- Creative Curriculum - this has been developed with the children at NCS in mind. We aim to raise awareness of the Global Goals and develop their understanding of how they can make a huge difference to the world we live in.
- Secondary School Transition Days - various transition days at Outwood. During these sessions, our pupils get to experience life in secondary school and some of the subjects and lessons they have to offer.
- Visits from key figures - throughout the year, we invite a range of visitors into school including authors and individuals from CFC who have all shared their experiences growing up and how they entered into the careers they have chosen.
- Residentials - during time at our school, pupils have the opportunity to engage in a range of residentials in Y5 and Y6. On these visits, our children explore different skills and develop their levels of independence.
- 11 by 11 - we have developed a list of 11 things that we would like children at our school to have achieved by the age of 11. This list is not exhaustive and teachers aspire to provide the children with as many opportunities as possible.
Policy Rationale:
At Newbold Church School, we recognise that for students to aspire and be successful academically and in the wider areas of their lives, they need to be given rich and sustained opportunities to develop their cultural capital.
The school recognises that there are six key areas of development that are interrelated and cumulatively contribute to the sum of a student’s cultural capital:
- Personal Development
- Social Development, including political and current affairs awareness
- Physical Development
- Spiritual Development
- Moral Development
- Cultural Development
Each subject taught within the school day makes its own contribution to pupils’ cultural capital development.
Please click on the relevant link above for a summary of the key areas of coverage for that area of Cultural Capital Development.
Last Updated August 2023