Why does Curriculum Enhancement matter?

What is Curriculum Enhancement? After years of working with schools on efficiency, affordability and recovery I found myself asking a common question when reviewing and analysing a school’s curriculum planning: “Is this curriculum plan the right size for the children that are currently in the building?” For many years schools have used a set of […]

The three Es of curriculum modelling

Over the past 10 years of reviewing curriculum design, I have tried to make a clear distinction between curriculum design in terms of the elements that make a broad and balanced curriculum, teaching and learning strategies and structural analysis. All are important but each should not be confused with the other. SMARTcurriculum® focuses on is […]

​Pack them in?

When we talk about class size it becomes a really contentious issue. Ministers are criticised for an agenda of raising them; Education Endowment Fund (EEF) curate research evidence that suggests that reducing class size is costly and has little impact on outcomes for learners (1); and teachers will say that in certain contexts ‘big’ classes are unmanageable […]

The Magnificent Seven

In an attempt to define Integrated Curriculum Finance Planning (ICFP), the Department for Education (DFE) originally outlined 7 measures that would make a significant difference in managing an establishment budget. Today this has been extended to 10 planning checks (Link here). You may be familiar with other systems that use a combination of these metrics outlined […]

Dream the Impossible Dream

ICFP, Integrated Curriculum Finance Planning, coined by Kate Copley a Deputy Director within the Department for Education (DFE), is the term that the DFE is now using to describe a process that has had a number of names in recent years. Some will recognise ‘Curriculum Led Finance Planning’ (CLFP) used by Outward Grange Academy Trust (OGAT) and various NPQH/NPQEL providers to describe a […]

A balance of three

For the past 10 years I have been working on school efficiency, particularly in the area of curriculum design and provision. As a result of that work I would suggest that there are three characteristics of curriculum design that need to be held in balance at every phase. Efficient (can we afford it?), Effective (does […]