‘Evolution not revolution’
• It is more than a decade since the national curriculum was last reviewed.
• It is essential that more children and young people build strong foundations and a love of learning in the primary years, embarking on their secondary education with their literacy and numeracy secure, and with knowledge, confidence and enthusiasm sparked for other subjects.
• We must facilitate more successful transitions into secondary education.
• We must maintain the strong academic core for all that supports life chances and ensure that more young people secure the expected standards in maths and English.
• The present architecture of key stages is generally working well and we recommend retaining it. Likewise, our national assessments and qualifications are, broadly, working well. We therefore recommend that the majority of the present framework arrangements and milestones for the curriculum and assessment remain.
• It is important that the national curriculum maintains its position as an ambitious entitlement for all. However, schools must have space to go beyond it to provide innovative practice, locally tailored content, and enrichment activities that help to ensure young people thrive in education and later life.
• Our recommendations are intended to ensure that teachers have enough flexibility to challenge high attainers and to make sure that those who are struggling with learning can master core concepts, thus ensuring that all children and young people get the best from the curriculum.
Assessment
We consider that the system is broadly working well, with an appropriate balance of formative, diagnostic and summative assessments, and we recommend retaining the broad thrust of the existing arrangements. However, opportunities for improvement exist, such as improving the assessment of pupils’ writing at the end of Key Stage 2.
Recommendations to the Government
• Introduce an oracy framework to support practice and to complement the existing frameworks for reading and writing.
• The refreshed national curriculum must be an aspirational, engaging and demanding offer that reflects the high expectations and excellence our young people deserve, irrespective of background.
• The refreshed national curriculum should retain a knowledge-rich approach, ensuring skills are developed in conjunction with knowledge in ways that are appropriate for each subject discipline.
• The national curriculum should be constructed so that it supports children and young people to master core concepts, ensuring sufficient space for them to build their knowledge and deepen their understanding.
• Curriculum coherence should be an organising principle for curriculum drafters and support the selection and prioritisation of content. Where appropriate, vertical core concepts on which subjects have been constructed should be clearly presented, and horizontal coherence should be ensured.
• Foundation subject content should specify the essential substantive knowledge and skills which should be taught to enable children and young people to meet expectations at the end of each key stage.
• The refreshed national curriculum should ensure the professional autonomy of teachers is maintained, making sure that greater specificity does not substantially restrict teachers’ flexibility to choose lesson content and how to teach it.
• The national curriculum is for all our children and young people. As such, it should reflect our diverse society and the contributions of people of all backgrounds to our knowledge and culture.
Subject Specific Recommendations
Art and Design recommendations
Make limited revisions to the Key Stage 1 to 3 Art and Design Programmes of Study to clarify and exemplify the knowledge and skills pupils should develop, including through their own creative practice, reflection and critical engagement.
Citizenship recommendations
Introduce a statutory measure to ensure that all pupils are taught a core body of essential Citizenship content at primary (including elements of financial and media literacy, and climate change and sustainability).
Improve the efficacy of primary Citizenship by clarifying the purpose and content of the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculum and removes any content that duplicates the new Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) Programme of Study.
Computing recommendations
Provide greater clarity in the Computing curriculum about what students should be taught at each key stage so that they build the essential digital literacy required for future life and work.
Design and Technology (D&T) recommendations
Rewrite the D&T subject aims to be more aspirational and clarify the purpose of study to focus on the subject’s distinct body of knowledge and capabilities.
Cooking and Nutrition recommendations
Rename the subject ‘Food and Nutrition’ and ensures it has its own aims and purpose of study that better reflect what it covers and its discrete identity within D&T.
Ensure that sufficient detail in the curriculum sets clear expectations about what should be taught at each key stage to reflect the fact that the subject develops skills for life as well as progression to further study.
English recommendations
Ensure that the English curriculum sets out a clearer purpose, with more clarity and specificity at each key stage, including clarifying the distinction between English and literacy. This should include more clearly drawing out curriculum requirements for speaking and listening, as well as Drama.
In particular, more clarity and specificity at Key Stage 3 should improve coherence between primary and secondary.
To support this,
Introduce an oracy framework to support practice and to complement the existing frameworks for reading and writing.
Review grammatical content to determine what content should be re-sequenced to later key stages, and what content should be removed entirely at Key Stage 2 to enable a greater focus on grammar in use rather than grammar in theory.
Replace the current grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) test with an amended test, which retains some elements of the current GPS test but with new tasks to better assess composition and application of grammar and punctuation. Once the new test is established in schools, the DfE may wish to consider whether the role of the test in accountability should remain as stands, or whether any changes, such as including the new test in headline measures, should be explored.
DfE (2023) - The reading framework; DfE (2025) - The writing framework
Drama recommendations
Greater specificity about Drama should be added to the Key Stage 1 and 2 English Programmes of Study, aiming to build solid foundations and support transition to Key Stage 3
Geography recommendations
Make minor refinements to the Geography Programmes of Study and GCSE subject content to respond to the issues identified, including by:
Refining content to support progression better to further study, deepen children and young people’s understanding of key geographical concepts, make content more relevant and inclusive, and remove unnecessary repetition across topics. Clarifying and reinforcing requirements for fieldwork to demonstrate its role more effectively in supporting content and the developing of disciplinary knowledge, ensuring changes remain proportionate and inclusive.
Embed climate change and sustainability more explicitly across different key stages, including across the physical geography, geographical applications and human geography sections of the curriculum, ensuring early, coherent and more detailed engagement with climate education.
This should be done without risking curriculum overload.
History recommendations
Adjust the History Programmes of Study to:
Improve the understanding and application of disciplinary knowledge and skills through additions and amendments to the disciplinary terms used.
Clarify the statutory and non-statutory content requirements to better support teachers in recognising and understanding the optionality that exists across Key Stages 1 to 3.
Support the wider teaching of History’s inherent diversity, including through the analysis of a wide range of sources and, where appropriate, local history.
Languages recommendations
Updates the Key Stage 2 Languages Programme of Study to include a clearly defined minimum core content for French, German and Spanish to standardise expectations about what 'substantial progress in one language' looks like.
Maths recommendations
Retain the amount and type of content in the Key Stage 1 to 3 curriculum, but re-sequences it so that topics are introduced in such a way that pupils can master them deeply, with opportunities for more complex problem-solving in each area, and reduce repetition in later years.
Ensure that Maths should be the subject in which pupils are exposed to mathematical concepts for the first time and the curriculum is sequenced as such. These concepts should then be applied in different contexts, where appropriate, in other subjects - for example, aspects of financial education in Citizenship.
Ensure that the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) works with DfE to refine the current non-statutory Maths test at Key Stage 1 to reflect any updates to the Maths curriculum. Alongside this, the DfE should consider ways in which it can encourage more schools to use it.
Ensure that the STA works with the DfE to redesign Key Stage 2 assessments minimally to reflect a re-sequenced curriculum and include a stronger focus on mental arithmetic and reasoning. For example: a student should not be exposed to compound interest during their financial education in Citizenship without first having been introduced to in Maths.
Music recommendations
Revise the content of the Programmes of Study for Key Stages 1 to 3 to ensure a curriculum pathway which gives all pupils a rigorous foundation in musical understanding and enables broader access to further study at Key Stage 4.
This could be achieved by:
Revisiting the purpose and aims, ensuring that they better reflect intended outcomes.
Adding some further specificity, without increasing volume, to clarify how pupils should progress in the three pillars of musical understanding (technical, constructive and expressive), and to ensure that a range of genres and repertoires can be covered.
Physical Education (PE) recommendations
Redraft the purpose of study for PE, retaining the importance of competitive sports, but clarifying the significance of providing all pupils with opportunities to learn in a physical environment and emphasising its physical, social, cognitive and emotional benefits that complement and enhance overall academic performance and general wellbeing.
Redraft the aims of PE so that they are clearer and more coherent at each key stage.
Introduces a concise, scaffolded approach to the attainment targets and key stage subject content within the Programmes of Study.
As part of this, the Government should review how the Programmes of Study refer to individual activities (such as dance, swimming and outdoor activity), including whether they are sufficiently specific to support quality teaching.
Dance recommendations
Reviews how the PE Key Stage 1 to 4 Programmes of Study refer to Dance, including whether they are sufficiently specific to support high-quality teaching and students’ progression, including to further study.
Religious Education (RE) recommendations
Add RE to the national curriculum in due course.
A staged approach should be taken, in line with the following steps:
Stage 1: Representatives from faith groups, secular groups and the wider teaching and education sector that we heard from during the Review should build on the constructive and collaborative work they have been doing through the course of the Review. DfE should invite the sector to form a task and finish group, convened and led by an expert Chair who is independent of any particular secular or faith group interest or representation. The Review recommends that, given her leadership of this strand of the Review’s work (based on her expertise), Dr Vanessa Ogden CBE should undertake this role, ensuring momentum in the successful convening she has established. This group should liaise with relevant external parties and, building on the existing National Content Standard for RE in England, engage with faith and non-faith schools, as well as RE organisations and faith communities, to co-create a draft RE curriculum. Whilst this work should be sector-led, the DfE should welcome efforts the sector makes to reach a consensus and support and facilitate this group where necessary.
Alongside this, the DfE should consider the legislative framework for RE, including, for example, what any changes to its status in the curriculum would mean for functions such as Standing Advisory Councils on RE (SACREs). A long-term plan for implementing potential changes to legislation should be drafted.
In parallel, the DfE should review the non-statutory guidance for RE, which has not been updated since 2010, to establish whether beneficial changes to subject content could be made in the short term that do not pre-empt the wider work the Review is recommending.
Stage 2: If consensus on a draft RE curriculum can be reached, the DfE should conduct a formal consultation on the detailed content.
Alongside this, the DfE should consult on proposed changes to the legislative framework, including any proposal to repeal the requirement to teach RE in school sixth forms.
Science recommendations
Ensure more cohesion and consistency across the primary Science curriculum, including clearer guidance on what should be taught, to what depth, at each stage.
At all key stages, base the Science curriculum on the fundamental concepts of each individual discipline so that students develop deep scientific and disciplinary knowledge and skills.
Ensure that the curriculum more clearly articulates the purpose and expectations of high-quality practical work in supporting the building of substantive knowledge and the development of important skills and procedural knowledge.
Ensure that, in relevant areas, the Science curriculum explicitly develops students’ understanding of the scientific principles that explain climate change and sustainability and the global efforts to tackle them.
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