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Curriculum jargon buster

Know your 'design' from your 'delivery'? Your 'substantive' from your 'disciplinary'? Check how much you know about these and other key terms. Share our handout with staff to help them brush up on their curriculum knowledge too.

Last reviewed on 9 December 2025See updates
School types: All•School phases: All•Ref: 37684
Contents
  1. Design and delivery
  2. Curriculum breadth vs depth
  3. Substantive vs disciplinary knowledge
  4. Core knowledge
  5. Threshold concepts
  6. Vertical vs horizontal structure 
  7. Cumulative vs segmented vs spiral curriculum 
  8. Context dependent vs independent
  9. Spaced interleaving
  10. Oracy
  11. Digital, financial and media literacy
  12. Download our handout and share it with your staff
  13. Get to grips with key pedagogical terms

Design and delivery

Note: Ofsted previously used the term ‘curriculum intent’ but now uses ‘curriculum design’ in its toolkits under the 2025 framework. It also now refers to how staff ‘deliver’ the curriculum instead of the term ‘implementation’. 

 DesignDelivery 
Definition

What you want pupils to know and be able to do, at different stages of their education.

It's the process of making your curriculum plan, and is not a vision or mission statement

How you teach your intended curriculum across all subjects, year groups and key stages 
Examples
  • A long-term plan (such as a curriculum map), showing the knowledge and skills you want pupils to gain at each stage and by the end of their time at school
  • Your rationale for why you've made these choices
  • Teaching methods
  • Classroom resources
  • Sequencing and structure
  • Assessment
 

  Breadth of curriculum  Depth of curriculum Definition The range of subjects taught across the whole curriculum, and the span of knowledge within each subject How deeply specific topics within each subject are studied Examples A broad curriculum