What is curriculum intent?
Your curriculum 'intent' is your curriculum plan.
It's what you want pupils to know and be able to do, both at different stages of their education (for instance, spring term of year 4) and by the time they leave your school.
Each subject/topic/area of your curriculum will have its own intent (or plan) for what you're going to teach, when, and why.
Ofsted's working definition of intent is:
A framework for setting out the aims of a programme of education, including the knowledge and understanding to be gained at each stage...
Your curriculum intent isn't a vision statement or a curriculum statement. That's because you simply can't summarise all of your curriculum planning in a paragraph or two!
However, your curriculum intent should flow from your school's vision and your educational philosophy. We have more guidance on this coming soon.
Collect your evidence
To use the tool, you'll need to first gather your:
- Long-term and medium-term plans
- Curriculum maps
- Lesson plans
- Notes from conversations with subject leaders and teachers
Download the tool
How to complete the audit in a trust
This partly depends on your trust's structure and curriculum approach, as well as the aim of the audit.
If your trust has an entirely autonomous curricula, or trust leaders want to examine the strengths and weaknesses of one particular school, school leaders can complete the audit and report back to the trust central team. Or, school leaders can do it in collaboration with trust leaders if the trust wants more central involvement.
However, if trust leaders are looking to compare schools and find areas for alignment, it's better to have central trust leaders complete the audit with school leaders from each school in turn. This way, there's a consistent core of people involved who are well-placed go through all the audits afterwards.
You know your problems – now what?
Your RAG ratings in your audit will tell you where your weak spots are. Next, go to our curriculum resource hub for advice on how to address them.