The Curriculum Design Toolkit gathers together service design tools, processes and stimuli that can be used by individuals or teams working with learners, colleagues, families, communities and partners. It is designed to help you engage with the core principles of Scotland’s Curriculum and supports curriculum design.

As an educator you might use the tools to design the curriculum for a single learner, a group, or a class. As a leader you might use the tools with colleagues to enhance the design of the curriculum at a departmental level, or wider school or setting level. At a local authority or regional level you might use the tools to support transformational and cultural change.

You may wish to start with a single tool, or follow one of the complete toolkits that have been designed and tested by educators. If you are feeling confident, you can use several tools to create your own process especially designed for your own setting or challenge.

The Curriculum Design Toolkit is a living resource which will grow and develop as we use it. It will follow the ‘How We Do It’ section of the Refreshed Narrative: the five ‘hows’

Here we offer two starting points for the journey:

• PDF file: Curriculum Design Toolkit: the essential tools (319 KB)
• PDF file: Curriculum Design Toolkit: understanding the learners (1.4 MB)

We would like to support your use of the tools and work with you to co-design new toolkits for specific challenges. Email us at curriculuminnovation@educationscotland.gov.scot to let us know what works and what you are struggling with so that we can offer support.

What is Service Design?

Service design is a human-centered, collaborative, iterative, holistic approach. It offers structure and creative tools that can have a powerful impact upon how we approach and deliver the curriculum. Watch this YouTube video to hear how Scottish service designers define what they do.

Service design follows four distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. Crucially it demands that we spend as long as possible understanding the users (the learners) and their needs, before embarking on a creative process of generating solutions. When we have solutions we believe might work, service design asks us to undertake small tests of change and fail early, creating prototypes rather than delivering fully formed solutions which may still have flaws.

The Curriculum Design Toolkit follows the Scottish Approach to Service Design which brings together national and local government, health, public bodies, third sector and private sector, to deliver end-to-end service journeys for citizens. By taking a service design approach your curriculum will readily dovetail with other services engaging with your learners’ lives, and empower an inclusive approach to Getting It Right For Every Child.