Chirnsyde Primary School

What is the Curriculum for Excellence?

Scotland’s curriculum – Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) – helps our children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21st century. A refreshed narrative on Scotland's curriculum, which sets CfE within the current context, was published in September 2019. It is available in both English and in Gaelic.

Curriculum for Excellence places learners at the heart of education. At its centre are four fundamental capacities. These capacities reflect and recognise the lifelong nature of education and learning. The four capacities are aimed at helping children and young people to become:

• Successful learners
• Confident individuals
• Responsible citizens
• Effective contributors

As part of their learner journey, all children and young people in Scotland are entitled to experience a coherent curriculum from 3 to 18, in order that they have opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to adapt, think critically and flourish in today’s world.

Curriculum is defined as the totality of all that is planned for children and young people from early learning and childcare, through school and beyond. That totality can be planned for and experienced by learners across four contexts:

• Curriculum areas and subjects
• Interdisciplinary learning
• Ethos and life of the school
• Opportunities for personal achievement

Curriculum Entitlements

Children and young people’s rights and entitlements are central to Scotland’s curriculum and every child and young person at Primary School is entitled to experience:

• A curriculum which is coherent from age 3 to 12
• A broad general education, including well planned experiences and outcomes across all the curriculum areas from early years through to P7. This includes understanding the world, Scotland’s place in it and the environment, referred to as Learning for Sustainability
• Opportunities for developing skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work
• Opportunities to maximise their individual potential, benefitting from appropriate personal support and challenge

Curriculum areas

There are eight curriculum areas:

• Expressive arts
• Health and wellbeing
• Languages (including English and modern languages)
• Mathematics
• Religious and moral education (including Religious and moral education)
• Sciences
• Social studies
• Technologies

Literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing are recognised as being particularly important – these areas are seen as being the ‘responsibility of all’ staff.

Related links

Benchmarks – The Curriculum for Excellence Benchmarks set out clear statements about what learners need to know and be able to do to achieve a level across all curriculum areas. You can view these here:

Early Level Benchmarks

First Level Benchmarks

Second Level Benchmarks

Experiences and outcomes (often called Es+Os) are a set of clear and concise statements about children's learning and progression in each curriculum area. They are used to help plan learning and to assess progress. You can view these here: 

Experiences and Outcomes

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