​St Agnes’ recognises the importance of children’s early education and we strive for excellence in our nursery and reception classes.

We believe that Early Years Education is the foundation in which children build the rest of their lives upon. Children learn in a complex way and are influenced by everything in their environment. Children use their senses to explore and make sense of the world around them. They learn through play, meaningful real world experiences and hands-on learning, through conversation with adults and other children and through a variety of planned experiences.

Our curriculum is designed to challenge children, develop their understanding of the world around them, excite and inspire their future interest.

‘Children are introduced to school life in the Early Years, where practise was exceptional: broad in scope with an ambitious curriculum that provides no limits or barriers to children’s achievement (SEV May 24).

Our curriculum is ambitious because it is grounded in the EYFS framework, child centred and stems from the needs and interests of the children. Our curriculum is underpinned by a play based approach where pupils have access to all areas of learning within the classroom and in the outside learning area, we utilise the opportunities that the outdoor area provides on a daily basis. Pupils engage in self-chosen activities as well as carefully planned adult directed sessions, including phonics.  

Through our curriculum offering we provide opportunities to extend the cultural capital of our children by firstly knowing our children and their families. We place great importance on using a wide vocabulary in our conversations with children, visiting places where children can find out about and explore the world around them including the exploratory park, Hertfordshire Zoo, the theatre and using interesting and open ended resources in addition to utilising outside providers.

We are proactive in our approach towards supporting home learning to ensure a consistent approach between home and school and to encourage high quality parent/child interactions. We use a range of strategies such informal conversations, stay and play sessions, newsletters and workshops for parents. We encourage reading at home by offering a home lending scheme with high quality texts and half termly rhymes to learn.