Statutory guidance

National curriculum in England: secondary curriculum

The national curriculum secondary programmes of study and attainment targets for key stages 3 and 4.

From:
Department for Education
Published
11 September 2013
Last updated
2 December 2014 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

National curriculum: secondary curriculum

Ref: DFE-00183-2013

PDF, 2.18 MB, 105 pages

Details

This is the statutory secondary national curriculum, including programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at key stages 3 and 4.

It is issued by law; you must follow it unless there’s a good reason not to.

All local-authority-maintained schools in England must teach these programmes of study, with the exception of key stage 4 English, maths and science.

All local-authority-maintained schools in England must teach key stage 4 programmes of study for English and maths to pupils in year 10 from September 2015, and pupils in year 11 from September 2016.

All local-authority-maintained schools in England must teach the new key stage 4 programme of study for science to pupils in year 10 from September 2016, and to all key stage 4 pupils from September 2017.

The individual programmes of study for key stages 3 and 4 are also available for each subject:

Further information about the pre-2014 secondary curriculum is available on the National Archives.

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

Updates to this page

Published 11 September 2013
Last updated 2 December 2014 + show all updates

  1. Updated to include details of the programmes of study for science at key stage 4.

  2. Added programmes of study for English and mathematics at key stage 4.

  3. First published.

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