The weight of building it yourself
Foresters Primary School had run a thematic curriculum for years, and Julia Merritt, headteacher, believed in that approach. The problem was the cost of sustaining it. Keeping content fresh, coherent and properly balanced across 259 children was a relentless task for the staff who carried it.
There's a massive workload attached to creating your own content, plus it's a real science, isn't it? Getting that balance right across the school.
Pushing the boundaries of a small world
Workload was one pressure. But there was a deeper reason why Cornerstones felt like the right fit for Foresters. The school serves a community where many children’s daily lives are contained and familiar, and Julia was clear that the curriculum needed to do more than reflect that world back to them. She wanted something that would stretch children’s thinking, build their knowledge, and take them somewhere genuinely new.
We really liked the way Cornerstones made those connections between different areas of the curriculum and also pushed the boundaries for them. For a lot of our kids their world is very small so to challenge them to learn about things beyond that and build their knowledge is just so important.
Moving to Maestro
In their eighth year of using Cornerstones , Foresters made the move to the updated curriculum and the school’s digital platform, Maestro, when it launched in 2019. The decision came down to trust and practicality. The sequencing had been thought through, and the team at Foresters did not need to start again.
We were really excited by the new curriculum and the platform, Maestro, because with workload in mind it was great to know that the Cornerstones team had done all the hard work of thinking through the sequencing, so we decided just to run with it.
The teachers really like that it is much more structured and they and the children are really enjoying the challenge. I wouldn't say we have got it completely right yet but the feedback has been really positive, it is still very much a journey we are on.
The depth of understanding about colour mixing and theory was amazing, we had such beautiful artwork and displays that I've never seen before.
Support that actually supports
Adopting a new platform always brings questions, and Julia found the support around Maestro was built with that in mind. One feature in particular turned out to matter more than she expected.
Maestro is absolutely brilliant. It is the best thing ever. I use live chat all the time and I probably ask the most stupid questions but there's always someone there to help and they always find an answer. But the masterstroke is when you are finished and cannot remember what they said, the support team send you a transcript. I have to say that's been an absolute game changer.
Summary
Foresters Primary School’s story is not about a school that had the wrong curriculum and found the right one. It is about a school that had always cared deeply about what it taught, and found a partner that could carry more of the weight, without letting go of what mattered. For Julia and her team, the question was never really about content. It was about whether children in a tight-knit London community could be given a broad education, and whether the staff delivering it could be protected from the exhaustion of building everything themselves.
For headteachers who recognise that combination of pressures, Foresters’ experience suggests a straightforward answer. Fifteen years in, the school is still on a journey, still refining and adapting, but the foundations are holding. The workload is more sustainable, the teaching is more structured, and the children are producing work that surprises their teachers.
