Review the Effectiveness of your Curriculum (Admin Users)

Review the Effectiveness of your Curriculum (Admin Users)

This guide is for senior leaders looking to evaluate the effectiveness of the current curriculum and make curriculum changes in the Creation Zone.

Step 1- What is your data telling you about the curriculum?

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For schools to create an engaging curriculum that challenges and addresses the needs of all learners, it is vital that senior leaders have visibility of attainment and progress across the whole school. 

Insights can be accessed throughout the school year, for effective monitoring and implementation of proactive interventions. 

Insights also provides valuable insights at the end of the academic year to evaluate the effectiveness of the current curriculum. 
We suggest that curriculum changes are prepared at the end of the academic year but only published once the system has migrated to the new academic year in August.

Changing curriculum objectives mid year has the potential to affect progress and attainment judgements so always run this past the team. 

Access Insights by clicking on 'Insights' on the navigation menu. 


The most powerful reports for curriculum development drill down into the curriculum to an aspect level:

Subject Leader report

Subject leaders have full visibility of data in one subject across the half terms selected, providing a comparison of every year group in the school. Users can view attainment or progress by changing the drop down menu as indicated below.


Subject leaders drill down into aspects within the curriculum, providing the data to make comparisons, interpret data and create suggestions for curriculum changes, CPD, resourcing, budgets across the school.

Phase Leader report

This report allows phase leaders to select multiple year groups and subjects for one term, to identify areas of curriculum development across a phase.


Phase leaders can view the data for each individual subject for each attribute assigned to students in the system, supporting leaders to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the curriculum for all students.

Below the attribute breakdown is an aspect breakdown for each year group in the phase, offer further opportunities to open discussion about the effectiveness of the curriculum.



Cohort Across Years

The 'Cohort Across Years' report allows senior leaders to view same cohort`s progress and attainment in a subject across multiple years.

This report is a fantastic springboard for conversation ahead of a cohort moving to the next year group as patterns identified can be proactively addressed by making curriculum changes in the subject. 



Cohort Comparison

Cohort comparison compares multiple cohorts performance on the same curriculum Subject. This allows senior leaders to spot trends in the curriculum e.g. particular times in the year where progress is consistently below expected or particular aspects of the curriculum where students consistently underachieve.


Step 2: Draft your curriculum changes


The Curriculum Zone is a safe space to make changes to your curriculum before publishing the changes to your live curriculum.



Top 5 tips for curriculum changes:

  1. Only admin users can make changes to the curriculum in the Creation Zone.
    (An admin user can change a teacher user's type for a short time to 'admin' to allow subject leaders to support with curriculum changes. Once complete, admin users change the user type back to 'teacher').

  2. The curriculum is locked at the end of the academic year and will display exactly as it was when the cohort was taught in that year. 
    You'll see when you look back at prior year objectives, any curriculum changes will only apply to the current cohort or future cohorts. This is to protect the integrity of prior year data.

  3. Curriculum changes should ideally be made at the end of the academic year and published only once the system has migrated.
    (Publishing changes mid year can change your attainment and progress data as the number of objectives applied in the calculation will be altered).

  4. Remember that when you click 'review and publish' all changes to every subject will be published at the same time.
    (You will see a list of all of the changes to be made ahead of confirming the publish and will also be alerted to any impact on assessments)

  5. A curriculum import file is a quick& easy way to import new aspects and objectives in bulk 
    (Note: a curriculum import can only be used to create new objectives, it will not amend existing objectives).

You can find out more information about making curriculum changes in the Creation Zone article: How to Customise your Ladders.

What are the consequences of changes made to aspects/objectives?

Existing assessments are unaffected              Possible change to existing assessments

Edit the name of an aspect/subject                 Add an aspect and objective mid year 
Edit an objective                                                Delete an aspect 
Reorder objectives within a year group           Change an objective's year group
Mark an objective as a KPI                               Add an objective
Add resources/ notes                                       Delete a subject
Add a new subject                                            Delete an objective


Common FAQ's


Q: Can I reorder the aspects within a subject?

A: At this time you cannot reorder aspects within a subject, the aspects will display in alphabetical order. 

Q: Do the numbers next to the objectives have any relevance?

A: No, these are not an intended order for teachers to teach objectives, simply the systems way of recording objectives

Q: I've added a new custom subject, why can't all year groups access these objectives?

A: If you are in your second year or beyond of using Learning Ladders, you will need to contact the team to enable all year groups to see the new objectives.

Q: Is there a maximum number of subjects?

A: No, schools can create as many subjects as taught in their curriculum


If you have any questions about making changes to your curriculum, reach out to the team at support@learningladders.info


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