Building Scotland’s Curriculum: a draft resource for discussion and further co-design
Building Scotland’s Curriculum will be an interactive, digital resource that supports curriculum making in schools and education settings. The final version of this document will replace the Building the Curriculum series from August 2028.
It aims to:
- outline all policy relating to curriculum in one place
- build on the work undertaken for the refresh of the curriculum narrative in 2018/19 and for Realising the Ambition: being me in 2018/20
- build on the learning from the range of curriculum design activity that has taken place across Scotland since 2021
- replace the Building the Curriculum series
- support and strengthen curriculum making at school and setting level over the ten years of the CIC
- include provocations and practical activities to support professional learning and a shared understanding curriculum making.
This is a first DRAFT for discussion and further co-design with Scotland’s educators.
It is deliberately being shared as a draft document.
We encourage leaders and educators to engage with this document and provide feedback to ensure the final version is practical and is responsive to their needs and those of the children and young people they work with.
This draft will be updated in September 2026 following initial testing with focus groups.
More formal feedback on this guidance will then be gathered until November 2026.
Practical activities will be provided to support professional dialogue and professional learning about the content of the resource. Initial draft activities are provided here for Parts 1 and 2, but these will be discussed and expanded upon at events for head teachers and setting leaders in September 2026.
The publication of the finalised first edition of this guidance will be January 2027.
This guidance will continue to evolve over the ten years of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) to support continuous improvement and in line with new approaches to inspection.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 3: What matters?
After exploring a shared understanding of purpose, educators consider the ‘what’ of curriculum. The CIC aims to strengthen all 4 contexts for learning and to support better connections between and across the contexts. This section will be a focus during the professional learning events for head teachers and leaders. Professional learning activities for this section will be available in September 2026.
Click here to download the draft text of BSC Part 3: What matters?
Part 4: How do we enact curriculum
Once questions of why, and what have been considered, educators move on to questions of enactment: how do we do it? This section relates to the enactment of the updated curriculum from August 2028 onwards; live co-design of this part is ongoing. Professional learning for this section will take place from session 2027/28 onwards.
Click here to download the draft text of BSC Part 4: How do we enact curriculum?
