What is the Curriculum?

Curriculum for Excellence is Scotland’s curriculum for children and young people aged 3-18. It’s an approach designed to provide young people with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need for learning, life and work in the 21st century.

Like every school in Scotland, St. David's teaches the content of the curriculum according to Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence guidance. 

It aims to enable every child or young person to be a:

• Successful learner 

• Confident individual

• Responsible citizen

• Effective contributor 

Our children are given regular opportunities to develop the skills and attributes of the above capacities.  

The curriculum is broken down into eight curricular areas with experiences and outcomes being broken down into subject organisers. This allows staff to skilfully plan for a balanced, coherent curriculum. You can view how the learning is set out for each class in the below Long Term Overviews. This will give you a sense of the themes of learning across the school year. 

You can read more about Curriculum for Excellence and how the curriculum is set out at ParentZone Scotland here. 

Religious Education - Health and Relationships Education

Religious Education in the Catholic school is distinctive because of its focus on the faith development of children and young people within the context of a faith community.  Its central purpose is to assist learners to make an informed, mature response to God’s call to relationship.  The invitation of Jesus Christ for all people to live life in all its fullness is the challenge that lies at the heart of Religious Education within a Catholic school. Religious Education can respond to this challenge by facilitating regular reflection upon the impact of the message of Catholic Christian faith on learners’ understanding of life and on their personal response to their life circumstances.  The development of faith through Religious Education in a Catholic school is understood to be an event of grace, realised in the encounter of the Word of God with the experience of the person.

Purpose and Aims

Religious Education in the Catholic school endeavours to promote the relevance of the Catholic faith to everyday human life and experience. Understanding that God’s grace is at work in all people’s lives, Religious Education makes explicit what has already been experienced to varying degrees in the lives of all learners.  It is designed to engage learners in an educational process which will:

• assist them to develop their knowledge and understanding

• develop the skills of reflection, discernment, critical thinking and deciding how to act in accordance with an informed conscience

• exemplify and foster the beliefs, values and practices which are compatible with a positive response to God’s invitation to faith.

God’s Loving Plan is a resource used in Catholic schools which has been developed by the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES). It is designed to guide teachers on how children can be helped to develop healthy attitudes to their bodies and to all human life so that they can form loving relationships, according to God’s loving plan for their lives. 

This video produced by SCES gives more information about God’s Loving Plan.

Class Long Term Plan (annual) Plans:

• demonstrate how each area of the curriculum will be covered across the academic year, chunked into blocks

• is informed by the transition information from the previous session

• contains subject organisers from each curricular area, without any detail of learning intentions or specific activities 

Please click on links below to view the Long Term Plans for each class.