Design a new curriculum

Design a new curriculum

The requirements on schools in terms of curriculum inspection are burdensome. The standards set out in the inspection framework can feel overwhelming at best and impossible at worst. This is why, for the last two years, our specialist primary curriculum team have taken great care to build and resource a high-quality and well-connected curriculum. If you want to find out more about the Cornerstones Curriculum, and how we've developed it to ensure sequencing, progression and coverage.
 
Most schools start with one of our curriculum models, then build and adapt it for their school, however, Maestro gives you the tools you need to build your own curriculum.

Only SLT/Maestro administrator users are able to design and activate a new curriculum. This feature will be hidden for Teacher/TA users.

Building your own curriculum

  1. Go to Design and lead > Design new curriculum.
  2. Select the Build your own curriculum tab.
  3. Add a Curriculum name (e.g. School curriculum 23-24).
  4. Select a type - School can be seen by all users, User can only be seen by yourself.
  5. Add any notes about your curriculum.
  6. *Optional step: Copy from an existing curriculum (if you've been using Maestro previously and want to adapt something you've used before).
  7. Click 'Create curriculum'.
Your curriculum has been created, and you can now start adding projects to design a curriculum for your school. Once you have created your curriculum, and are ready to use it, you will need to activate it, so it is live for all staff to use.


Info
Choose from the range of projects available on Curriculum Maestro, such as Imaginative Learning Projects, Knowledge-Rich Projects, Love to Investigate science investigations and projects that the school has created (read more about project types). The different types of projects can be used in the construction of your curriculum and schools do not need to limit themselves to just one type. This is one of the ways that schools can create a curriculum that reflects the needs of their context and aims.
Creating a new curriculum from a model
  1. Go to Design and Lead > Design new curriculum.
  2. Select either the Single age or Mixed age model from the tabs at the top.
  3. Click 'Create curriculum'.
  4. Add a Curriculum name (e.g. School curriculum 2022-23).
  5. *Optional step: Deselect White Rose Maths and/or Love to Celebrate.
  6. *Optional step: Make the curriculum 'Active' (Warning: this will replace your current live curriculum and class plans immediately as well as logging out all users).
  7. Click 'Create'.
*Our curriculum model includes White Rose Maths planning and their free resources, and Love to Celebrate (RE) planning and resources. If you're not sure whether you want to include these, leave them selected as they can be removed at a later stage if not required.

Your curriculum has been created, and you can now move on to making the curriculum bespoke to your school. If you haven't made the curriculum 'Active' already, once you are happy with your curriculum, and are ready to use it, you will need to activate it, so it is live for all staff to use.

Warning
Making a curriculum 'active' will log out all school users, so please ensure you have informed staff and that it is a convenient time.

View all curriculums

  1. In the top right hand corner, click the small arrow next to your name.
  2. Go to All curriculums.
All curriculums will be listed below with a brief overview of the content.
  1. Your active curriculum (live). This is the curriculum that your teachers will see and be teaching from.
  2. Draft/old curriculums. Draft curriculums are those that all SLT and Administrators can see and develop. Old curriculums can be left here as 'archived' curriculums or deleted, if required.
  3. User curriculums (owner will be the user's name). These are visible only to yourself. They can be used to test project combinations and plans.
  4. Favourites. These cannot be edited, only viewed or copied. This is a curriculum that is created automatically based on projects that have been tagged as 'favourite' projects by teachers.
AlertOld curriculums may only be deleted if they do not contain planned and taught lessons. 

Activating your curriculum

Once you have created your curriculum, and are ready to use it, you will need to activate it, so it is live for all staff to use.
  1. In the top right-hand corner, click the small arrow next to your name.
  2. Go to All curriculums.
  3. Click the cog icon next to your required curriculum.
  4. Select Activate to make it your live curriculum.

AlertMaking a curriculum 'active' will log out all school users, so please ensure you have informed staff and that it is a convenient time.

Summary

When designing or reviewing a curriculum, you will always start on the Summary tab. Once your curriculum has projects added, this page will give you a summary of the coverage and the total number of lessons within your intended curriculum.
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Clicking on the number of projects will show you an overview of the project coverage for the chosen year group. The Overview shows the main aspects within the project and the PoS view shows the programmes of study covered. Clicking on the projects icon will open that project in a new tab, so that you can have a look in more detail.

 The other tabs are:

  1. Curriculum sequence - enables you to add projects to and remove projects from your curriculum and complete coverage exclusions, as required (restricted to Maestro Administrators and SLT access levels). Read more about this page here.
  2. Coverage exclusions - shows all of the exclusions that have been made in your curriculum on one page.
  3. Coverage:
    1. Detailed coverage - shows your coverage of the programmes of study by subject, by year group and by project. Also enables Maestro Administrators and SLT access levels to assign gaps to projects. Read more about this page here.
    2. Programmes of study and early learning goals - shows coverage of each statement by subject.
  4. Class plans - enables Maestro Administrators and SLT access levels to add their chosen projects to plans and cycles and to assign classes to the plans. Read more about this page here.
  5. Class plan details - are created for each class with our default content but can be edited to be customised to a teacher's requirements.
  6. Progression Read more about this page here:
    1. Objectives by subject - shows coverage of the skills and knowledge framework by subject. Can also be filtered to split skills and knowledge.
    2. Objectives by Big Idea - shows coverage by Big Idea. Can also be filtered to split skills and knowledge.
  7. Details - can be edited to give your curriculum a name, add in notes and change the coverage against different curriculum choices.

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