At a glance
- The most comprehensive primary curriculum package available on the market
- Powerful planning, assessing, evaluation and analysis of curriculum in one system
- Navigable content and easy access to resources and data
- Fully integratable with school MIS
- All content completely modifiable to fit every context
- Over 100 fully planned, resourced and mapped projects for Primary phase
Curriculum Maestro is a one-stop package for your Primary curriculum needs. Brought to you by Cornerstones Education, it is already being used in over 1,500 primary schools in the UK.
The fully online package allows you to have everything you need to plan, track, adapt and evaluate the quality of your curriculum at your fingertips. With over 100 fully planned and resourced projects, the content offer of this alone is astounding.
But, Curriculum Maestro is much more than a bank of resources.
At its core, Curriculum Maestro encourages ambition. The content is focused around National Curriculum content and each project is composed of sequences of lessons.
These are fully adaptable and can be removed (or added to) with ease. The lessons are knowledge focused and have clear intentions, formatting and access.
Essentially, you can use Curriculum Maestro to map out and plan every lesson that is going to be taught in your school and disseminate these lessons to the teachers in a few simple clicks.
The core content is what Cornerstones Education call their interconnected skills and knowledge framework. This framework is the summarisation of all of the learning that takes place within the curriculum.
Everything is trackable across the curriculum enabling leaders to see progression, teaching and outcomes against this framework for each child.
The real power for leaders comes from beyond the mapping and planning though. The fully automated interface allows teachers to attach plans and resources to their timetables so that teachers can plan collaboratively and evaluate the learning of pupils against the objectives that they are being taught.
Not only this, but the system encourages both organisation and collective efficacy around planning and even shows teachers what they wanted to teach and if they actually were able to teach it.
Curriculum Maestro is designed to work in harmony with your MIS, meaning that pupils and teacher lists can be quickly and easily imported.
Another factor that makes Curriculum Maestro stand out is the integrated assessment system. The interface shows leaders how many planned objectives have been taught to children.
In addition, the system shows the skills that classes and individual pupils are stuck with, giving rich insight into what is happening on the journey of each pupil. The obvious question would be, at what cost in terms of workload? The answer is simple – minimal.
Quick judgements allow teachers to record data on pupils which is then accumulated and analysed. From a leadership perspective, you have access to cohort objective attainment on a group or individual level as well as the ability to run reports at the click of a button.
The system comes with a full suite of tests and these make for exceptional end of unit assessments.
In terms of usability and functionality, the interface is relatively intuitive. In just a few minutes, you are able to exploit basic functionality, and with some more exploration, the advanced functionality comes relatively intuitively.
Not only do classroom teachers get a quick access to their timetable (or any other widget they or you choose) but they also are only a handful of clicks away from thousands of lessons.
The lessons are searchable by topic or by learning intention – another massively powerful tool, especially if you are asked where and when topics are covered in the different key stages and also when evaluating where there might be gaps in your curriculum.
What really struck me about this product was the power it gives leaders in terms of supporting their staff and reducing workload. By streamlining planning, tracking and assessment, there is a much greater sense of collective responsibility with staff.
Curriculum Maestro informs you what is happening in your school and allows you deep insight into things you may not always be able to access first hand.
Verdict
- Exceptional functionality
- High-quality content
- Designed with teachers and leaders in mind
- A great way to streamline your assessment and teaching
Upgrade if…
You are looking to support staff with planning and assessing or if you are looking or a full curriculum rewrite. Also consider if you are looking to build collective efficacy and consistency in your school.
Prices start at £775. See cornerstoneseducation.co.uk for full details.
Reviewed by Adam Riches
