About the Program

The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust is working together with other national partners to support schools as they respond to the opportunities offered through the new secondary curriculum and 14–19 reforms.

The programme recognises that each school will be at a different starting place, with a different planned rate of progress towards a curriculum that gives every learner a personalised route through the new 11–19 landscape.

Curriculum designers from all middle and secondary schools are invited to be part of this programme, not as passive recipients but as active members of a learning community responding creatively to the key questions:

• What are we trying to achieve?
• How do we organise learning?
• How well are we achieving our aims?

We have established a network of lead practitioners from secondary, special and middle schools across England who exemplify good practice in the area of curriculum. They work with us to share this more widely through events, one-to-one support and resources while also ensuring that the key messages about the new curriculum are disseminated to schools.

Events
SSAT lead practitioners will lead termly events for experienced and aspiring curriculum designers until summer 2009. These events will allow learning groups of curriculum designers to work in depth, sharing developing ideas and exploring emerging practice about disciplined curriculum innovation.

Resources
To support the programme, the SSAT publishes flexible resources that schools can customise for their own purposes, based on examples of innovative and effective curriculum design nationally. A broad range of examples of approaches for grouping and timetabling are complemented by audit tools and support materials for consultation with a variety of audiences.

The following introductory resources are available for download:

NTCD01: The new Secondary Curriculum - A curriculum for the future
NTCD02: The new Secondary Curriculum - A curriculum for the future - New to the project
NTCD03: New opportunities - The new Secondary Curriculum - A curriculum for the future
NTCD04: New to....The new Secondary Curriculum
NTCD05: New to Curriculum Design - My name is Angelica

Ongoing support
Curriculum designers have access to ongoing support from lead practitioners. They will be able to make contact by telephone, email and through the SSAT website. The programme will develop a curriculum design learning community where schools can share ideas with others across England who have similar needs, ideas and approaches.

For the latest information about the project please download a copy of our latest update:

Curriculum design update winter 2007
Curriculum design update autumn 2008
Curriculum design update winter 2008
Curriculum design update summer 2009
Curriculum design update autumn 2009
Curriculum design update spring 2010