At Castle Primary, we believe that Art and Design is a vital part of a broad and balanced curriculum, offering children opportunities to express their ideas, explore their creativity and develop practical skills that they can carry with them throughout their lives. Our curriculum is designed to ensure that every child, regardless of starting point, develops as an artist — thinking, working and evaluating like one.

We have carefully selected and sequenced a set of units that build a clear skills progression across the school. Rather than treating each unit as a standalone topic, units are chosen and ordered so that specific skills — drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, printing and digital art — are revisited and developed with increasing complexity as children move through the school. This ensures that knowledge and skills are not taught in isolation but build cumulatively, allowing children to make connections between what they have learned before and what they are learning now.

Because our classes at Castle Primary are taught in mixed age groups, this progression is mapped across a rolling cycle rather than a rigid year-by-year structure, so that no skill is missed or unnecessarily repeated, and each child encounters increasing challenge appropriate to their stage of development, whatever their age.

We use resources from Oak National Academy to support high-quality teaching, giving children access to well-researched lesson content and exposure to a rich and diverse range of artists, craftspeople and art movements from different times and cultures.

Our aims for Art and Design are that children will:

• Develop a genuine love of art, craft and design, and confidence to experiment and take creative risks.

• Build a secure, progressive set of practical skills in a range of media and techniques.

• Develop the vocabulary to discuss, evaluate and analyse their own work and the work of others.

• Learn about a diverse range of artists, craftspeople, designers and art movements, from different times and cultures.

• Understand how art reflects and shapes history and culture.

Through this carefully sequenced curriculum, we intend for every child to leave Castle Primary as a confident, skilled and knowledgeable young artist.