Cultural Capital
Ofsted define Cultural Capital as the ‘knowledge children need to prepare them for their future success and be educated citizens’. At Little Digmoor, we believe this means ensuring that every child has access to as wide a range of experiences as possible as well as skills such as good manners, knowing how to behave in different social situations and how to get along together. In other words we want to make sure that our children as many advantages as possible.
So how do we improve our children’s cultural capital?
In school we do a lot of work around good manners and how to behave in social situations, some of which the children may not have encountered yet. We make sure they have good table manners and know the appropriate way to behave on visits out of school We also work hard to make sure that our extensive enrichment programme gives children the opportunities to try out activities and experiences which might not be possible otherwise.
Some examples in school
As part of enrichment, we try to give the children the opportunities to experience things which would otherwise involve costly lessons, and those which may not be available locally. This year we have provided ice-skating lessons, climbing sessions, opera, drama and keyboard lessons. Children who learned violins last year and were keen to develop their skills were offered small group session.
We also offer a wide range of extra-curriclular activites which aim to widen the children’s interests and experiences. Please take a look at our extra-curricular clubs to find out what we offer.
We try to raise the children’s aspirations through visitors to school and also through our annual Careers Fair. Key stage 2 children also have careers lessons as part of enrichment, along with finance lessons.
Visits are chosen to widen the children’s experiences, for example we chose a performance of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and a theatre company worked with the children to produce a ‘play in a day’ of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.