Curriculum
Ofsted
05th July 2021
There’s no avoiding it; having a well-sequenced, ambitious and connected curriculum is one of the most critical priorities for primary schools in England. It’s central to Ofsted’s quality of education judgement, so your curriculum needs to be expertly constructed to enable your children to know and do more, particularly if you’re due an inspection.
Correctly sequencing your curriculum and deciding which concepts, knowledge and skills to include, is a complex, time-consuming task that demands curriculum and subject expertise. Our curriculum has everything you need to achieve this, saving you time, money, and unnecessary stress and workload.
Primary school in Wales? Read our tips on using Cwricwlwm Maestro to implement your curriculum here.
Curriculum 22 is a fully sequenced and interconnected curriculum that begins in Nursery and develops across the key stages to Year 6. Available on our online platform, Curriculum Maestro, the curriculum is ambitious in content and expertly crafted, with stringent sequencing and a web of multidisciplinary and subject-concept connections. The curriculum is specially designed to help children build and sequence knowledge and skills without cognitive overload. In short, we’ve done all the structural work for you, so you’re free to focus on personalising the finer details to reflect the unique character of your school.
Curriculum 22 is carefully designed to help children build and retain the required subject knowledge and skills to help them build their understanding of the concepts of the curriculum. Built on the national curriculum programmes of study, the curriculum begins with Big Ideas or macro concepts that steer the whole curriculum. These Big Ideas are broken down into smaller subject-specific concepts and aspects. These are further broken down to form a robust knowledge and skills framework that underpins the whole curriculum. The framework provides you with clear endpoints and curriculum-related expectations, from the Early Years to Year 6.
View the Curriculum 22 overview
View the history subject overview sample
Curriculum sequencing is the most critically important part of your curriculum. Without the correct sequencing, children will not have the building blocks to create a robust subject or concept schema. An effective curriculum needs correct sequencing within and across the subjects. This is so that concepts that span multiple subjects are cohesively mapped for maximum cognitive impact.
For example, the diagram in the download below demonstrates how the concept of climate is constructed and sequenced across our curriculum.
View curriculum sequencing example
Listen to our podcast episode on curriculum sequencing
Subject-specific vocabulary is a crucial part of a well sequenced curriculum. Vocabulary should be carefully mapped out across your curriculum to clarify when technical vocabulary phrases are introduced and revisited. In our curriculum, vocabulary is clearly mapped to ensure that children learn the correct words and phrases in the right order. This enables children to articulate their learning with confidence.
The content of our curriculum is broad, varied and engaging and covers all statutory content set out in the subject programmes of study. In Years 1 to 6, curriculum content is organised into a range of main and mini subject-driven projects. Main projects span a whole term and are focused on geography and history. The main curriculum projects also include English packs and a book or novel study. Mini projects can be taught over a term or half term and are subject-focused for science, art and design, and design technology. The curriculum also includes White Rose Maths termly projects.
Our Early Years projects are carefully sequenced into half-termly main and mini projects for Nursery and Reception.
Download the Cornerstones Curriculum 22 overviews below.
View Cornerstones Curriculum 22 overview (single age)
View Cornerstones Curriculum 22 overview (mixed age)
Our curriculum and supporting resources live in one place on our online platform, Curriculum Maestro. Maestro allows all your curriculum documentation, planning, timetabling and assessments to be stored and organised so that they are easy to edit, adapt and share across the school. Sharing your curriculum amongst all stakeholders is incredibly easy. Moreover, the flexibility and functionality of Maestro enable you to adapt and edit lesson and project content and take account of your school’s needs, strengths and context.
‘We’re strong advocates of Maestro: it’s allowed our teachers to focus on how to teach, not just what to teach.’ Justin Cowley, Deputy Headteacher, Mendell Primary School
Book a demo of the curriculum and platform
All schools who implement Curriculum 22 will be able to access a brand-new area of Curriculum Maestro called CurriculumPRO. CurriculumPRO enables you to view and demonstrate the sequencing and connectivity of this curriculum at the click of a button. We’re confident CurriculumPRO will become an invaluable tool for all school and curriculum leaders wanting to demonstrate their curriculum provision, both internally and externally.