Statutory guidance

National curriculum in England: English programmes of study

The statutory programmes of study and attainment targets for English at key stages 1 to 4.

Applies to England

Documents

English glossary

English appendix 1: spelling

Details

These are the statutory programmes of study and attainment targets for English at key stages 1 to 4. They are issued by law; you must follow them unless there’s a good reason not to.

All schools maintained by the local authority in England must teach these programmes of study from September 2016.

English appendix 1 and appendix 2, and the English glossary do not appear in the HTML document but are available as separate PDFs.

Schools are not required by law to teach the example content in [square brackets] or the content indicated as being ‘non-statutory’.

Short films of teachers and subject experts talking about the national curriculum and how to use it are also available.

Updates to this page

Published 11 September 2013
Last updated 16 July 2014 + show all updates
  1. Added programme of study for English at key stage 4.

  2. First published.

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