Alton Convent Prep's curriculum is about balance.

We seek to find the perfect balance between nurture and challenge. We are a warm, supportive learning community, in which the needs of all are addressed, in which each child's talents and abilities are given the opportunity to flourish, and where learning is fun. Our curriculum also seeks to challenge each child: providing new experiences, providing lessons which meet pupils where they are and then take them on to somewhere they wouldn't have reached otherwise, and providing academic, sporting or personal challenges, which encourage a sense of determination, perseverance and ultimately achievement. The nurture and support we provide enables and encourages our children to rise to these challenges.

We've found the right balance between tradition and innovation. In many ways we're a traditional prep school, remaining true to our core values and rising above the changes and chances of educational fads and government policy. Thus we have competitive sport, a house system and collective worship, as well as high expectations of our pupils, including diligence, honour and pride in their uniform. We are also a place of innovation though, where pupils are equipped to construct new knowledge together, to experiment and to discover things afresh for themselves. We are a place where things like the National Curriculum and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies are adapted and improved, rather than applied without reflection, and a place where there is a genuine partnership between school and home.

We also balance the personal and social dimensions of learning. As a school with small class sizes and a concern for the well being of each child, we do all we can to meet the needs, aptitudes and aspirations of each individual, and help each to develop their own personality and fulfil their God given potential. We also attach a high priority to the social dimension of education, with plenty of opportunity for pupils to learn together, to learn from one another, and to help one another to learn. This also develops pupils' relationships with one another and more general social skills, and their sense of care and responsibility for one another rather than merely themselves.

The prep curriculum is based on the Foundation Stage Guidance and the National Curriculum, guaranteeing a degree of breadth and balance, and making for the smooth transfer of pupils into the school, and in the case of our boys, onwards at 11. We provide a generous time allocation for the core of the curriculum, recognizing that mastery of other subject areas, and access to the curriculum at senior school, will depend on being able to read, write, speak and listen, as well as essential numeracy. We go beyond the confines of the National Curriculum, making time each week for personal, social, health and moral education, for circle time, for ICT as a subject in its own right, and for French and drama. Similarly, we attach great importance to PE, and to a healthy lifestyle generally.

Balanced against this formal, timetabled curriculum is a wide variety of extracurricular opportunities, gradually increasing in range as a child progresses through the prep. Thus children can choose from activities such as instrument lessons, orchestra, singing, the choir and our chamber choir, ballet, modern dance, fun running, football, netball, rugby, karate, cycle training, a creative club, art and craft, sewing, card making, Latin and chess. As well as making good use of our own extensive grounds, we have an impressive programme of trips and visits, including residential visits for pupils in Years 4 to 6, recognising that education takes place in the real world. Other highlights of the year include high calibre musical and dramatic events, collective worship led by the pupils, as well as school Masses marking the passage of the seasons and the Church's year, theme days, our creative arts week and a retreat for Year 6.

We are confident that our curriculum is of sufficient breadth that all here can find areas in which they can excel, that all here "be the best that they can be".