Area Based Curriculum

The Area Based Curriculum comprises a new type of local curriculum, one that is co-owned by schools and the community that surrounds them, and one that uses the surrounding area and its resources as a framework for curriculum development. See concept note.

Having initiated a pilot project in Manchester in September 2008, we're now looking at how we can use what we've learned from there to develop the idea further in other places - particularly as part of our Citizen Power Peterborough project.

What is an Area Based Curriculum?

An Area Based Curriculum is one that is co-designed and co-owned by schools and other partners in the community. It takes into account a variety of views about what it is important to know, and is taught by teachers and community members together, inside school and in other locations in the local area.

Any school curriculum must of course take the National Curriculum and national qualifications into account, as well as ensure that the professional role of the teacher is respected. An Area Based Curriculum must do all of this, but in addition ensure that it challenges and questions the following:

1. The people involved: re-imagining who can be involved with education, and in what ways, by engaging a wider community in curriculum development
2. The places where learning happens: re-imagining the role of a place in educating young people by establishing the whole area as a learning environment
3. What it is important to know: re-imagining where knowledge is created and found by exploring the context of a place.

Lessons for localism

The RSA's Area Based Curriculum work in Peterborough is producing some important outcomes for students and schools that will be reported on in full in 2012. Interesting challenges are also emerging through the process of supporting schools to turn to their local areas in support of curriculum development, and this first of several pamphlets looks at the lessons that can be drawn for the government's localism agenda more broadly.

Download Area Based Curriculum: Lessons for localism (PDF, 1.5MB)