Welcome to the new primary curriculum
Visit the curriculum at http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk to access the site that claims to be ‘packed with guidance and tools to help schools design a curriculum that inspires and challenges all their learners.’
‘Introducing the new primary curriculum: guidance for primary schools’ provides an overview of the changes and overall information. In this article we summarise what the new curriculum consists of.
Key features
The curriculum claims to have:
- Strengthened focus on literacy and numeracy skills with opportunities to apply these skills throughout the curriculum
- Increased expectations for ICT
- Reference to broad areas of learning
- Increased emphasis on personal development
- Improved transition from primary to secondary
It’s claimed that the new curriculum:
- reduces prescription ‘encouraging teachers to use their professional judgement and expertise to design the curriculum’
- allows schools to tailor their curriculum to local circumstances more flexibly
- will help performance in the middle years of primary through the development of three curriculum phases
- promotes inclusion, diversity and community cohesion
- encourages active learning
What’s new
Programmes of learning are set out in six broad areas of learning which incorporate subjects. Each area of learning includes the opportunity to develop literacy and numeracy and apply ICT. The content is set out in the three phases of early, middle and later primary.
The areas of learning are:
- understanding the arts
- understanding English, communication and languages
- historical, geographical and social understanding
- mathematical understanding
- understanding physical development health and wellbeing
- scientific and technological understanding
Running through these are the ‘essentials for learning and life’:
- literacy, numeracy and ICT
- personal learning, thinking and social skills
It is expected that these essentials will be built into the curriculum plan and run through the other areas of learning, ‘embedding the essentials’.
In addition to the six areas of learning there is a revised non-statutory programme of learning for religious education.
Organization of the areas of learning
The programmes for each area of learning include information about:
- curriculum aims
- an ‘importance statement’
- essential knowledge
- key skills including four strands of ‘investigate’, ‘create and develop’, ‘communicate’, ‘evaluate’
- cross-curricular studies
- breadth of learning
- curriculum progression
So for example in ‘understanding English, communication and languages’ ‘essential knowledge’ includes:
a. how language is used to express, explore and share information, ideas, thoughts and feelings
b. the power of language and communication to engage people and influence their ideas and actions
c. howcreativityandimaginationareessentialtomakingnewmeanings, exploring and experimenting with language and creating effects
d. how languages work, their structures and conventions, variations in use and changes over time
e. how languages, literature and the media enable different ways of thinking and give access to ideas and experiences from different cultures and times.
Key skills include:
a. listen, read and view in order to understand and respond
b. discuss, debate and draft in order to develop and explore ideas, themes and viewpoints
c. speak,write and broadcast in order to present ideas and opinions
d. evaluate, analyse and critique in order to review, refine and comment
e. interact and collaborate in order to share understanding of what is said, read and communicated.
Cross-curricular studies include:
a. children to develop and apply their literacy, numeracy and ICT skills
b. personal, emotional and social development
c. enhancing children’s understanding of English,communication and languages through making links to other areas of learning and to wider issues of interest and importance.
Breadth of learning includes:
a. In speaking and listening children should:
- develop and apply speaking and listening skills2 to suit a variety
- tell and listen to stories and explore ideas and opinions in both formal and informal contexts
- express themselves creatively in improvisation, role play and other drama activities
- use digital and visual media to support communication both face-to-face and remotely.
- read widely for pleasure
- develop and apply their reading skills in order to become critical readers
- engage with an extensive range of texts3, including literature from different times and cultures4,information and reference texts,literary non-fiction5, media texts6 and online social and collaborative communications
- work with writers, playwrights and poets in and beyond the classroom.
- learn to write for a variety of purposes7, for a range of audiences and
- develop their understanding of how writing is essential to thinking and learning and is enjoyable, creative and rewarding
- explore writing using different media including web pages and multimodal10 formats in English and in other languages.
- look at the patterns, structures and origins of languages12 in order to understand how language works
- listen to and join in with conversation in other languages and communicate about simple, everyday matters
- understand how learning other languages can help them appreciate and understand other cultures as well as their own.
Curriculum progression is the most detailed part of the programme. This is organized into the columns ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘later’. It identifies what children should be taught during each period of primary school under the sub-sections of:
- speaking and listening
- reading
- writing
- speaking and listening
- languages – reading and writing
- languages – intercultural understanding
In some cases there is no content under the ‘early’ section of the programme – for example ‘languages’.
Designing and planning your curriculum
It is suggested that seven steps are taken when planning and designing the curriculum:
- identifying priorities
- recording your starting point
- setting clear goals
- designing and implementing
- reviewing progress
- evaluating and recording impact
- maintaining, changing of moving on
An interactive planning tool is available on the website.
