Curriculum areas

The curriculum areas are the organisers for setting out the experiences and outcomes. In drawing up the experiences and outcomes, learning in each curriculum area has been reviewed and updated to emphasise the contributions it can make to developing the four capacities.

The curriculum areas are:

• Sciences
• Languages
• Mathematics
• Expressive arts
• Social studies
• Technologies
• Health and wellbeing
• Religious and moral education

Curriculum areas are not structures for timetabling: establishments and partnerships have the freedom to think imaginatively about how the experiences and outcomes might be organised and planned for in creative ways which encourage deep, sustained learning and which meet the needs of their children and young people.

Subjects are an essential feature of the curriculum, particularly in secondary school. They provide an important and familiar structure for knowledge, offering a context for specialists to inspire, stretch and motivate. Throughout a young person’s learning there will be increasing specialisation and greater depth, which will lead to subjects increasingly being the principal means of structuring learning and delivering outcomes.