This section contains information on the following:
1) The Primary Key Stages (definition)
2) Early Years Foundation Stage requirements
3) Key Stage 1 and 2 requirements
4) General National Curriculum Requirements
5) Withdrawing a pupil from a National Curriculum Subject
In a primary school, the national curriculum is split into three different key stages:
All EYFS provision must follow the guidance in the EYFS statutory framework. You need to make sure all pupils study the 7 areas of learning:
3 prime areas:
4 specific areas:
The EYFS framework (link below) also sets out ‘early learning goals’ you need to help pupils work towards – these are the knowledge, skills and understanding that children should have by the end of reception.
See the framework linked to above, and our range of EYFS curriculum articles, for more information.
The EYFS Statutory Framework
Setting the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five
You must also teach religious education (RE)
There isn’t a statutory programme of study for this, but there is non-statutory guidance. The Local Authority has a standing advisory council on RE (SACRE) committee that’s responsible for deciding the RE syllabus in our area.
PSHE isn’t statutory, but you’re expected to teach it
Your personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education provision should reflect the needs of your pupils.
Where appropriate, it should build on the curriculum requirements, and include:
*From September 2020 all schools with a primary phase must provide both relationships education and health education. The PSHE Association has created a programme of study for PSHE education that may be used as a basis for the school’s own PSHE curriculum.
Schools need to provide for their pupils’ SMSC development
Spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) education aren’t discrete subjects but you need to promote your pupils’ development in these areas as part of offering a broad and balanced curriculum.
The DfE has several bits of guidance on SMSC.
Schools are expected to promote fundamental British values
These are:
The DfE has advice on promoting British values as part of SMSC development.
Subject teaching time
Schools can decide how much time to spend teaching each subject, or even combine subjects together in topics, as long as they:
Pupils must follow the National Curriculum. The following table shows which subjects parents have the automatic right to withdraw their child from.
| Subject | AUTOMATIC RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CHILD |
| Religious Education (RE) | Yes |
| Relationships and Sec Education (RSE) and Health Education | YES, from some aspects (see below) |
| English | NO |
| Mathematics | NO |
| Science | NO |
| Art and Design | NO |
| Citizenship | NO |
| Computing | NO |
| Design and Technology | NO |
| Languages | NO |
| Geography | NO |
| History | NO |
| Music | NO |
| Physical Education (PE) including swimming at either KS1 or KS2 | NO |
Schools have to teach RE but parents can withdraw their children for all or part of the lessons. Pupils may raise spontaneous questions on religious matters in subjects other than RE, and issues related to religion come up in other subjects such as history or citizenship. However, the right of withdrawal does not extend to these areas of the curriculum.
Parents can withdraw their children from sex education, apart from the aspects covered by the science curriculum. They can’t withdraw their children from relationships or health education.
Parents can’t withdraw their children from PE. This includes:
All National Curriculum subjects are designed to have a positive impact on the education, health and wellbeing of a child, withdrawing your child from a subject could reduce this impact. The school is willing and able to make adjustments so that the subject is more accessible to your child. If you wish to proceed with a request to withdraw your child from a National Curriculum Subject, please consider the following points:
If you would still like to proceed with making a request for withdrawing your child from the subject, please contact the school to discuss this request in more detail with the Head Teacher before putting your request in writing.
There may be occasions where requests are made to withdraw a child from subjects without ‘Automatic right to withdraw child’ or from other activities (e.g. assemblies, break/lunch time time activities) for other reasons:
In all three of the above examples, schools will use the flexibility available in the full National Curriculum and other Department for Education (DfE) documentation to provide appropriate access to learning in all subjects, as well as completing a risk assessment in partnership with the parents to include at least partial access to the subject/activity and to prevent any unnecessary loss of learning, health or wellbeing.
