The long-awaited Curriculum and Assessment Review has finally been published, and it is certainly a substantial document. For most primary leaders, it will require a good sit down, several cups of coffee and maybe even a highlighter pen or two to mark the main points of change for the primary curriculum. So, to help you with that, here is a classroom-focused roundup of what the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) Final Report is signalling for the following primary subjects:
- Art and design
- Citizenship
- Computing
- D&T
- Geography
- History
- Languages
- Music
- PE
- RE
- RHE
- Science
I’ll cover Maths and English in my following blogs, as the changes require a more focused look. For each subject, I’ve pulled out the KS1–KS2 headlines and added quick ‘so what?’ notes for your planning.
Cross-subject themes you’ll see everywhere
There are some strong emerging themes across the review which all primary schools should be aware of. These include:
- Secure foundations: Strong prior knowledge and skills, carefully sequenced, is the through-line. This is about depth and breadth, not one or the other.
- Concepts before coverage: Subjects should be led by powerful knowledge and skills with planned cohesive progression, not long lists of disconnected topics.
- Relevance and inclusion: Digital, media and financial literacy, climate and sustainability, equality and representation are to be embedded where they naturally live in subjects, not bolted on.
- Manageable for non-specialists: More clarity on essential concepts and progression to support consistent cohesive delivery in primary.
Subject specific recommendations
Building on the above core themes, recommendations for specific subjects for Key Stages 1 and 2 are as follows:
Art & Design
What CAR says: Keep the flexibility and creativity, but add specificity so non-specialists can plan progression with confidence (clearer knowledge/skills and examples across media, not just drawing/painting). Light-touch revisions; content volume shouldn’t increase.
Things to think about: Map skills by media. Exemplify progression in practical techniques (e.g., printmaking, textiles) without overloading.
Citizenship (moving into primary)
What CAR says: Make Citizenship statutory from KS1, with a core entitlement that complements (not duplicates) RHE/RSHE — focus on financial literacy, democracy/government, law/rights, media literacy and climate/sustainability. Keep it slim to protect curriculum time.
Things to think about: Plan short, well-sequenced units across KS1–KS2 (e.g., money in KS1 → budgeting/risks in KS2; class voting in KS1 → local democracy in KS2).
RHE / RSHE (primary focus: RHE)
What CAR says: RHE remains statutory at primary. CAR notes confusion between RHE/RSHE, PSHE and Citizenship; the Citizenship changes above are intended to reduce overlap and clarify roles. (RSHE guidance update sits outside CAR and begins from Sept 2026.)
Things to think about: Keep your RHE policy/timetable, and re-check where financial/media literacy live once Citizenship becomes statutory to avoid duplication.
Computing
What CAR says: Keep Computing as a statutory foundation subject and tighten clarity at each key stage. Build essential digital literacy and computer science step-by-step; include age-appropriate AI awareness. Note the opportunity to reference digital skills in other subjects (e.g., GIS in Geography), aligned to Computing’s progression.
Things to think about: Ensure an explicit KS1→KS2 progression for algorithms, data, systems and safe/ethical use. Plan light cross-subject applications (e.g., data handling in Science) but keep core teaching in Computing.
Design & Technology
What CAR says: Primary D&T is broadly working; keep it hands-on and practical and refresh the aims to reflect modern design/engineering, including sustainability, social responsibility, inclusive design and better reasoning about materials selection. Ensure smoother progression into KS3.
Things to think about: Make material choices purposeful (properties vs. context), keep prototyping and finished outcomes, and thread sustainability/inclusive design through briefs from KS1 upwards.
Food & Nutrition (within D&T at primary)
What CAR says: Rename Cooking and Nutrition to Food and Nutrition; keep it within D&T at KS1→KS3 but specify expectations more clearly (practical cookery, hygiene, healthy eating, sustainability). Aim for consistent, life-skills-focused provision in primary.
Things to think about: Sequence core techniques and kitchen safety from KS1; build nutrition concepts and sustainable choices in KS2; keep it practical and age-appropriate.
Geography
What CAR says: Geography has improved; now refine to remove repetition, embed disciplinary knowledge (enquiry, spatial reasoning, use of digital tools), clarify fieldwork expectations (local, low-cost options are fine), and make climate/sustainability explicit across the curriculum.
Things to think about: Plan simple, local fieldwork from KS1; plot how map-skills and spatial thinking scale across KS1→KS2; add contemporary/local case studies; thread climate concepts where they naturally fit.
History
What CAR says: History is strong, but primary needs clearer disciplinary expectations (how historians use evidence and construct claims) and clearer signals about what’s statutory vs optional to avoid ‘teach everything’ pressure. Support diversity and local history through better exemplification, without removing core topics.
Things to think about: Make disciplinary thinking explicit in your knowledge organisers and lesson sequences; show progression in evidence handling from KS1 (sources/objects) to KS2 (claims/corroboration).
Music
What CAR says: Address inequity of access and make the KS1→KS3 pathway more explicit so non-specialists can secure the three pillars (technical, constructive, expressive). Aim for stronger foundations (including notation/musical language) so more pupils can continue in KS3/KS4, even without private tuition. Government should explore better support for instrumental learning/reading music in primary.
Things to think about: Guarantee weekly music. Build a simple, cumulative notation strand, and ensure all classes experience singing, composing and performing with visible progression.
Physical Education (including Dance)
What CAR says: Refresh the purpose to balance competitive sport with broad participation and the physical, social, emotional and cognitive benefits of PE. Provide clearer aims for KS1→KS2; spend longer on core skills for mastery; ensure Dance and Swimming are taught well and consistently; strengthen expectations for outdoor/adventurous activity.
Things to think about: Plan longer skill blocks (not rapid carousels), secure water safety/swimming entitlement, and make Dance a visible, progressive strand across KS1→KS2.
Religious Education (RE)
What CAR says: Move towards adding RE to the national curriculum (via an independent, sector-led task-and-finish group using the REC National Content Standard), modernise guidance, and reduce fragmentation. Aim for a clear, sequenced core for primary, supporting understanding of major religions and worldviews and respectful dialogue.
Things to think about: Keep delivering planned RE; watch for national framework developments; ensure coherence and progression now (not ad hoc assemblies or theme days).
Science
What CAR says: Keep Science knowledge-rich and make KS1→KS2 more coherent and balanced across Biology, Chemistry, Physics. Clarify essential knowledge/vocabulary, map progression, and define the purpose of practical work (hands-on and demonstration) linked to core ideas. Embed climate science meaningfully and strengthen cross-curricular links (without duplication). Build pupils’ capacity to evaluate evidence and spot misinformation.
Things to think about: Publish your KS1→KS2 concept map; schedule purposeful practical science – what skill/concept is being secured?; weave climate mechanisms where scientifically valid; use common language for enquiry types across the school.
Cornerstones perspective
This report has always been presented as an evolution, not a revolution. However, there is a lot to digest, and I am not sure that the task of reviewing their school curriculum will be an easy one for primary schools.
Luckily for schools using Maestro, they already have a digital curriculum platform, most of this work will be done for them, and require nothing more than a session with their curriculum adviser to highlight the changes.
I’m delighted that the review aligns closely with how we structure curriculum thinking in subject concepts and our Engage–Develop–Innovate–Express pedagogy works brilliantly for the acquisition of knowledge and using and applying it.
For a full explanation on how the Cornerstones Curriculum and Maestro functionality will ensure that your curriculum stays fully aligned with any new recommendations, read my follow-up blog for Maestro users.
| Area | Recommends that the Government: | The Cornerstones Curriculum has: |
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| Curriculum principles | The refreshed national curriculum must be an aspirational, engaging and demanding offer that reflects the high expectations and excellence our young people deserve, irrespective of background. |
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| The refreshed national curriculum should retain a knowledge-rich approach, ensuring skills are developed in conjunction with knowledge in ways that are appropriate for each subject discipline. |
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| The national curriculum should be constructed so that it supports children and young people to master core concepts, ensuring sufficient space for them to build their knowledge and deepen their understanding. |
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| Curriculum coherence should be an organising principle for curriculum drafters and support the selection and prioritisation of content. Where appropriate, vertical core concepts on which subjects have been constructed should be clearly presented, and horizontal coherence should be ensured. |
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| Foundation subject content should specify the essential substantive knowledge and skills which should be taught to enable children and young people to meet expectations at the end of each key stage. |
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| The refreshed national curriculum should ensure the professional autonomy of teachers is maintained, making sure that greater specificity does not substantially restrict teachers’ flexibility to choose lesson content and how to teach it. |
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| The national curriculum is for all our children. As such, it should reflect our diverse society and the contributions of people of all backgrounds to our knowledge and culture. |
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| General | Introduces an oracy framework to support practice and to complement the existing frameworks for Reading and Writing. |
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| Reviews and updates all Programmes of Study to include stronger representation of the diversity that makes up our modern society, allowing more children to see themselves in the curriculum. |
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| Develops the national curriculum as a digital product that can support teachers to navigate content easily and to see and make connections across key stages and disciplines. |
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| Develops a programme of work to provide evidence-led guidance on curriculum and pedagogical adaptation (as well as exemplification) for children and young people with SEND, including those in specialist provision, who experience various barriers to accessing the curriculum. |
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| Involves teachers in the testing and design of Programmes of Study as part of the drafting process. This must take into consideration the curriculum time that is available, ensuring the national curriculum is ambitious but teachable within a typical school timetable. |
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| Subject | Recommend that the Government: | The Cornerstones Curriculum has: |
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| Art and Design | Makes limited revisions to the Key Stage 1 to 3 Art and Design Programmes of Study to clarify and exemplify the knowledge and skills pupils should develop, including through their own creative practice, reflection and critical engagement. |
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| Citizenship | Introduces a statutory measure to ensure that all pupils are taught a core body of essential Citizenship content at primary (including elements of financial and media literacy, and climate change and sustainability). |
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| Improves the efficacy of primary Citizenship by clarifying the purpose and content of the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculum and removes any content that duplicates the new Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) Programme of Study. | ||
| Computing | Provides greater clarity in the Computing curriculum about what students should be taught at each key stage so that they build the essential digital literacy required for future life and work. |
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| Reviews where digital skills and technologies have become an integral part of subject disciplines other than Computing. Where this is the case, it should determine whether to include this specific digital content in those subjects’ Programmes of Study, sequenced and aligned with the Computing curriculum. | ||
| D&T | Rewrites the D&T subject aims to be more aspirational, and clarifies the purpose of study to focus on the subject’s distinct body of knowledge and capabilities, with a particular focus on Key Stage 3. |
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Refines the D&T curriculum content to: • Explicitly include how to achieve sustainable resolutions to design challenges. • Embed the teaching of social responsibility and inclusive design explicitly within the curriculum, as appropriate to the key stage, throughout the design process. • Support the development of critical decision-making skills about material selection. • Ensure that realising designs remains integral to pupils’ experience of D&T. |
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| Cooking and Nutrition | Renames the subject ‘Food and Nutrition’ and ensures it has its own aims and purpose of study that better reflect what it covers and its discrete identity within D&T. |
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| Ensures that sufficient detail in the curriculum sets clear expectations about what should be taught at each key stage to reflect the fact that the subject develops skills for life as well as progression to further study. | ||
| English | Ensures that the English curriculum sets out a clearer purpose, with more clarity and specificity at each key stage, including clarifying the distinction between English and literacy. This should include more clearly drawing out curriculum requirements for speaking and listening, as well as Drama. |
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| To support this, we recommend that the Government introduce an oracy framework to support practice and to complement the existing frameworks for reading and writing. |
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| Reviews grammatical content to determine what content should be re-sequenced to later key stages, and what content should be removed entirely at Key Stage 2 to enable a greater focus on grammar in use rather than grammar in theory. |
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| Replaces the current grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) test with an amended test, which retains some elements of the current GPS test but with new tasks to better assess composition and application of grammar and punctuation. |
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| Once the new test is established in schools, the DfE may wish to consider whether the role of the test in accountability should remain as stands, or whether any changes, such as including the new test in headline measures, should be explored. | ||
| Drama | Greater specificity about Drama should be added to the Key Stage 1 and 2 English Programmes of Study, aiming to build solid foundations and support transition to Key Stage 3. |
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| Area | Recommend that the Government: | The Cornerstones Curriculum has: |
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| Geography |
Makes minor refinements to the Geography Programmes of Study to respond to the issues identified, including by: • Refining content to support progression better to further study, deepen children’s understanding of key geographical concepts, make content more relevant and inclusive, and remove unnecessary repetition across topics. • Clarifying and reinforcing requirements for fieldwork to demonstrate its role more effectively in supporting content and the developing of disciplinary knowledge, ensuring changes remain proportionate and inclusive. • Embedding climate change and sustainability more explicitly across different key stages, including across the physical geography, geographical applications and human geography sections of the curriculum, ensuring early, coherent and more detailed engagement with climate education. This should be done without risking curriculum overload. |
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| History |
Adjusts the History Programmes of Study to: • Improve the understanding and application of disciplinary knowledge and skills through additions and amendments to the disciplinary terms used. • Clarify the statutory and non-statutory content requirements to better support teachers in recognising and understanding the optionality that exists across Key Stages 1 to 3. • Support the wider teaching of History’s inherent diversity, including through the analysis of a wide range of sources and, where appropriate, local history. |
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| Languages | Updates the Key Stage 2 Languages Programme of Study to include a clearly defined minimum core content for French, German and Spanish to standardise expectations about what ‘substantial progress in one language’ looks like. |
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We recommend that local authorities, multi-academy trusts and schools: • Should explore the potential benefits of a coordinated approach in their local areas to the main language taught from Key Stage 2 through to Key Stage 4, taking account of their local context and priorities. The Government should look to encourage this activity. |
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| Maths | Retains the amount and type of content in the Key Stage 1 to 3 curriculum, but re-sequences it so that topics are introduced in such a way that pupils can master them deeply, with opportunities for more complex problem-solving in each area, and reduce repetition in later years. |
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| Ensures that Maths should be the subject in which pupils are exposed to mathematical concepts for the first time and the curriculum is sequenced as such. These concepts should then be applied in different contexts, where appropriate, in other subjects – for example, aspects of financial education in Citizenship. | ||
| Ensures that the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) works with DfE to refine the current non-statutory Maths test at Key Stage 1 to reflect any updates to the Maths curriculum. Alongside this, the DfE should consider ways in which it can encourage more schools to use it. |
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| Ensures that the STA works with the DfE to redesign Key Stage 2 assessments minimally to reflect a re-sequenced curriculum and include a stronger focus on mental arithmetic and reasoning. For example: a student should not be exposed to compound interest during their financial education in Citizenship without first having been introduced to it in Maths. |
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| Music | Revises the content of the Programmes of Study for Key Stages 1 to 3 to ensure a curriculum pathway which gives all pupils a rigorous foundation in musical understanding and enables broader access to further study at Key Stage 4. |
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This could be achieved by: • Revisiting the purpose and aims, ensuring that they better reflect intended outcomes. • Adding some further specificity, without increasing volume, to clarify how pupils should progress in the three pillars of musical understanding (technical, constructive and expressive), and to ensure that a range of genres and repertoires can be covered. • Explores ways to better optimise its investment in Music education to support the teaching and learning of musical instruments and the reading of music to ensure equitable access to, and progression in, Music education. |
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| PE | Redrafts the purpose of study for PE, retaining the importance of competitive sports, but clarifying the significance of providing all pupils with opportunities to learn in a physical environment and emphasising its physical, social, cognitive and emotional benefits that complement and enhance overall academic performance and general wellbeing. |
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| Redrafts the aims of PE so that they are clearer and more coherent at each key stage. | ||
| Introduces a concise, scaffolded approach to the attainment targets and key stage subject content within the Programmes of Study. As part of this, the Government should review how the Programmes of Study refer to individual activities (such as dance, swimming and outdoor activity), including whether they are sufficiently specific to support quality teaching. | ||
| Dance | Reviews how the PE Key Stage 1 to 4 Programmes of Study refer to Dance, including whether they are sufficiently specific to support high-quality teaching and students’ progression, including to further study. |
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| RE |
Adds RE to the national curriculum in due course. A staged approach should be taken, in line with the following steps: Stage 1: • Representatives from faith groups, secular groups and the wider teaching and education sector that we heard from during the Review should build on the constructive and collaborative work they have been doing through the course of the Review. DfE should invite the sector to form a task and finish group, convened and led by an expert Chair who is independent of any particular secular or faith group interest or representation. The Review recommends that, given her leadership of this strand of the Review’s work (based on her expertise), Dr Vanessa Ogden CBE should undertake this role, ensuring momentum in the successful convening she has established. This group should liaise with relevant external parties and, building on the existing National Content Standard for RE in England, engage with faith and non-faith schools, as well as RE organisations and faith communities, to co-create a draft RE curriculum. • Whilst this work should be sector-led, the DfE should welcome efforts the sector makes to reach a consensus and support and facilitate this group where necessary. • Alongside this, the DfE should consider the legislative framework for RE, including, for example, what any changes to its status in the curriculum would mean for functions such as Standing Advisory Councils on RE (SACREs). A long-term plan for implementing potential changes to legislation should be drafted. • As part of this review, the DfE should consider removing the statutory requirement for learners in school sixth forms to study RE. • In parallel, the DfE should review the non-statutory guidance for RE, which has not been updated since 2010, to establish whether beneficial changes to subject content could be made in the short term that do not pre-empt the wider work the Review is recommending. Stage 2: • If consensus on a draft RE curriculum can be reached, the DfE should conduct a formal consultation on the detailed content. • Alongside this, the DfE should consult on proposed changes to the legislative framework, including any proposal to repeal the requirement to teach RE in school sixth forms. |
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