Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills through exposure to a rich curriculum and planned cultural experiences.
This knowledge then becomes one of the key ingredients our pupils can draw upon to be successful members of society.
It helps children achieve their goals whatever their starting point.
Every child and family who joins our setting will have their own knowledge and experiences that will link to their culture and wider family. This might include: languages, beliefs, traditions, cultural and family heritage, interests, travel and work. We believe that for pupils to be able to appreciate and understand other cultures, they first need to feel confident in their own cultural identity first.
At Delamere School, children benefit from a flexible curriculum that builds on what they understand and know already. We believe that exposure, not only to culture but also to situations in which the children might not have previous experiences of, is of paramount importance to their ongoing success.
Gradually widening children’s experiences as they progress through school is an important step in providing rich and engaging learning across the curriculum. We plan carefully for children to have progressively richer experiences throughout their time at Delamere. These include trips to the local park, shops and visits to places of worship, museums, sports and music venues just to name a few.
At Delamere we don’t view cultural capital as a separate subject but view it as something that flows through our curriculum and is part of everything we do. We are aware that some of our children have only limited exposure to experiences in their early years. We address this through dialogue with parents and provide experiences that will extend and develop their cultural capital.
At the beginning of each academic year all parents of children entering Nursery and Year 3 are provided with a cultural capital survey. The intent of this is to find out the breadth of experiences children have had prior to starting Delamere and when they are not in school. It also provides parents with the opportunity to tell us if there are any experiences that they would like their child to try.
Following analysis of the survey results we collate a list of children who are a priority to access the cultural capital experiences. This has helps us to prioritise children when opportunities arise eg trips to CAFT, theatre visits, Child Flight etc. It has also helped to inform our planning , particularly in EYFS.
