Nursery Curriculum

Like all establishments providing pre-school education, we follow national curriculum guidelines and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) inspect us every six/seven years.


Curriculum for Excellence

Children at St Mary’s Nursery Centre follow the Scottish Government’s Curriculum for Excellence 3-18 years. 

This curriculum focuses on the importance of knowledge and skills and will support children in every way possible so that they can fulfil their potential and make the most of their opportunities.

The importance of developing children’s literacy and numeracy skills has been clearly recognised as being vital in everyday life and is the responsibility of all those working with our children.

All staff also have a shared responsibility for children’s health and wellbeing helping to promote confidence, independent thinking and positive attitudes as this is central to effective learning.

The Curriculum for Excellence recognises that children’s learning goes beyond their nursery experiences and promotes close partnership working with family, community and schools.

The aim of our curriculum is to improve our children’s achievements and life chances, to nurture successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.

If you want to know more about Curriculum for Excellence, please visit Education Scotland’s website at the following link:


Together we can and we will

‘Together we can and we will’ is a guidance for early years staff working with children aged 0-3 years. It has been developed in line with the values, purpose and principles of the Curriculum for Excellence.

The document focuses on 5 key areas of development:

  • health and well being
  • emotional spiritual well being
  • social development
  • physical development
  • cognitive development

‘Together we can’ recognises the important role parents and carers have in their child’s development and aims to build on previous experiences children have either had at home and /or in other pre-school settings through partnership working with early years professionals. For further information and resources, please see the following link:


We are always looking inwards, outwards and forwards to identify areas for improvement in order to continually improve our practice, the learning environment we create and the experiences we provide. The core documentation we use to support us in providing a quality curriculum for our children are: