Mixed-age approach
Teaching across year groups and phases with confidence
Every child deserves an ambitious curriculum, whatever their class looks like
Thousands of schools across the UK teach in mixed-age classes. It brings its own challenges, particularly when it comes to planning a curriculum that covers the full national curriculum for every year group without gaps or repetition. With the right framework and the right support though, mixed-age teaching is something your whole school can do with confidence.
What does great mixed-age teaching look like?
Every child progresses through a coherent, ambitious curriculum with no gaps and no unnecessary repetition. Your teachers plan with confidence because the hard work of sequencing across year groups has already been done for them. Leaders have a clear view of coverage and progression across the whole school, no matter how complex the class configuration. This is the reality for schools using the Cornerstones mixed-age curriculum.
Challenges we help mixed-age schools overcome
Here’s how the Cornerstones mixed-age curriculum addresses four of the most common challenges in schools teaching across multiple year groups.
National curriculum coverage
Every Cornerstones mixed-age curriculum is built on our comprehensive skills and knowledge progression framework, spanning Nursery to Year 6. You can be confident that every child in every year group is receiving full coverage of the national curriculum, with no subjects or programmes of study missed.
Avoiding repetition
One of the biggest challenges in mixed-age teaching is ensuring children don't cover the same content twice. Our curriculum advisers work with you to carefully sequence your projects across multi-year cycles, so every child experiences a broad, varied curriculum throughout their time in your school.
Assessment across year groups
Assessing children at different stages in the same class doesn't have to be complicated. Our digital curriculum platform, Maestro, ensures your curriculum has fully integrated assessment, enabling you to track individual children's progress against their specific year group expectations, giving you a clear and accurate picture of learning across your whole school.
Flexibility for changing configurations
No two years are the same in a mixed-age school. That's why the Cornerstones curriculum is designed to flex around your class structure rather than the other way around. We'll help you build a curriculum model that works for your school now and whenever classes change. The curriculum is adaptable at every level – in curriculum design, projects and lessons.
See how Cornerstones could work for your school
Whether you have two year groups in one class or five, every mixed-age school has its own unique challenges. A curriculum conversation is the best place to start. Tell us about your school and we’ll help you find a solution that works for your children, your teachers and your specific class configuration.
We're on a three year rolling programme with mixed-age groups working at different levels. The teacher takes a Cornerstones topic and adapts it to make it relevant for our children. There might be some children working at a year two level so they would just have to bring it down.
Abigail Wilburn
Flexible sequencing that works for every year group
The Cornerstones mixed-age curriculum is built on a comprehensive skills and knowledge progression framework spanning Nursery to Year 6. Rather than locking you into a fixed sequence, it gives you the flexibility to choose the projects and themes that work for your school and build multi-year curriculum cycles that ensure every child progresses without gaps or repetition.
Our curriculum advisers work with you directly to design a model that fits your specific class configuration. However complex your situation, we’ll help you build something coherent, ambitious and manageable.
Maestro takes the complexity out of mixed-age planning
Planning, tracking and managing a mixed-age curriculum is complex. Maestro, our digital curriculum platform, is designed to make it easier to manage. Flexible curriculum planning tools let you adapt long and short-term plans quickly. Clear progression pathways ensure every child is tracked against their specific year group expectations. Leaders get a real-time view of coverage and progression across the whole school, regardless of how classes are configured.
Explore MaestroWhat you get with the Cornerstones mixed-age curriculum
Access to Maestro
Maestro is our award-winning digital curriculum platform, built to handle the complexity of mixed-age teaching. Plan across multiple year groups, track individual pupil progress against year group expectations, and give leaders a clear view of coverage and progression across your whole school, however your classes are configured.
1:1 support throughout your time with us
Every school gets a dedicated curriculum adviser from day one. Your adviser will work with you to design a curriculum model that fits your specific class configuration and provide training, guidance and practical support throughout your licence.
A choice of curriculum projects
Choose the projects that suit your school and we'll help you build coherent multi-year curriculum cycles that ensure every child progresses without gaps or repetition.
Fully integrated assessment suite
Track progress for every child against their specific year group expectations. Make live assessment judgements at the click of a button and produce clear reports for parents, governors and Ofsted.
1000s of quality resources
Every project comes complete with beautifully designed, high-quality resources such as videos, audio recordings, presentations, and quizzes, all specifically designed to support teaching, learning, and retrieval. Everything your teachers need, ready to use.
Fully aligned national curriculum content
Every project is mapped to the national curriculum programmes of study, giving you complete confidence in your coverage across every subject and every year group.
Access to our EYFS Curriculum
If your school spans Nursery to Year 6, our EYFS curriculum is included. Fully aligned to the Early Years areas of learning and linked to Year 1. Adaptable to suit your setting, it ensures your youngest children get the same quality of provision as every other year group.
Hear from schools using our mixed-age curriculum
We are now coming towards the end of our 2-year rolling programme. The impact of the Cornerstones curriculum has been fantastic in our school.
Phil Sales
We wanted to change the curriculum structure, so I sought advice on adapting the curriculum to suit our cycles and mixed classes. Getting a session booked with Janet was straightforward; she then supported me and shared some excellent examples.
Michelle Rockingham
The Maestro digital platform has been central to the development of our curriculum as a very small school with mixed-age classes. Our workload has decreased, and it is partly down to the Cornerstones curriculum on Maestro that we achieved our latest Ofsted curriculum recognition.
Terri Daters
See how Cornerstones could work for your mixed-age school
Every mixed-age school is different. Whether you have two year groups in one class or five, a curriculum conversation is the best place to start. No agenda. Just a genuinely useful discussion about what your school needs and how we can help you build something that works.