Getting started with your curriculum
Your curriculum should reflect the unique characteristics of your school or the strengths, talents and interests of your teaching staff or children.
The curriculum model available to use on Maestro is based on our comprehensive skills and knowledge framework. It is structured around the Four Cornerstones of Learning and has our ten Big Ideas or global concepts running throughout.
The Cornerstones Curriculum model
Schools are free to choose their own projects and build their own curriculum if they wish. However, in the current educational climate, we strongly advise schools to adopt or work towards the Cornerstones Curriculum. The Cornerstones Curriculum will best help you to meet the challenging requirements of the new inspection framework. If you want to find out more about our curriculum model, and how we've developed it to ensure sequencing, progression and coverage, please read our articles about the Cornerstones Curriculum.
Most schools choose to start with one of our curriculum models, then build and adapt it for their school. However, Maestro also gives you the tools you need to build your own curriculum. Your curriculum can be constructed using the tools within Maestro which will enable you to view and compare Cornerstones projects, add your own school projects, check coverage and progression and review the sequence of learning.
Schools will approach this task in various ways, but below are some of the most frequently used methods:
- Use the Cornerstones curriculum model, which has been designed with the best progression and coverage possible
- Ask teachers to choose and 'favourite' the projects that they would like to teach
- Leaders choose the projects that they would like to be taught
- As a staff, view and compare the projects and choose those that most closely match the existing curriculum
Things to consider
Whichever method is used to select and construct the curriculum, and which projects/combination of projects have been chosen, leaders will need to carry out checks using the tools in Maestro to ensure that the curriculum matches the school’s aims, has coverage of the National Curriculum (if required) and is coherent, broad and balanced. The tools within Maestro can be used to check that the intended curriculum has a coherent narrative across subjects, programmes of study and year groups. Read more here: Checking curriculum coverage and progression
Potential gaps should be identified and discussed using these tools and changes made to project selections where necessary. Subject leaders may wish to investigate the coverage, progression and gaps in their own subject. They can do this at the subject/year group level, or at the subject/aspect level.
Questions that may be useful to prompt these discussions include:
- Have we created a sensible, coherent journey in all subjects across the year groups?
- Do we have any gaps and, if so, how will we resolve them? Solutions can include changing project choices, assigning gaps to existing projects and creating your own projects.
- Do subject leaders know what aspects of their subject are being covered in the intended curriculum, in which year groups and through which projects?
- Do teachers know what they are responsible for teaching in their class? Do they know which programmes of study, skills and knowledge have been taught in the previous year group, and which will be taught in the next year group?
- Does everyone know how the Big Ideas (larger concepts or global themes) are addressed in each subject and year group?
Related Articles
What are the 'Big Ideas' in the Cornerstones Curriculum?
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