How to adopt a new curriculum without losing what makes your school distinctive

Why enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough

Veritas Primary Academy is a 424-pupil primary school in Staffordshire. Danielle Conneely, the school’s Deputy Headteacher, and Richard Balding, who is now Headteacher, were central to the decision to adopt Cornerstones around five years ago. The case for change wasn’t born from failure. The school had energy, creativity, and genuine investment in curriculum design. But when leaders looked closely at what children were actually retaining, the picture was less reassuring.

Whilst our previous curriculum was full of engaging activities and great wow starts, we found that it was too vague. It lacked the clear sequencing and structure required to give children the appropriate knowledge and skills.

A curriculum with ambition built in

One of the things that surprised leaders most when they began working with Cornerstones was the sheer depth of what was on offer. The breadth and rigour of the content went further than what the school had previously planned for itself, and the progression across year groups became immediately visible in lessons and in books.

The content was so much more than what we might have delivered ourselves, and the progression from year 1 to 6 was just so clear in our learning walks and looking at books.

That depth brought something else with it. Teachers were presented with rich, fully sequenced content and responded with a renewed sense of purpose in the classroom.

The volume of content has really increased the intensity of pace. Teachers are so keen to get everything covered, it has created a sense of urgency around the learning.

The wider curriculum finding its place

For many primary schools, foundation subjects have long sat in the shadow of English and Maths. At Veritas, one of the clearest signs of progress has been watching that balance begin to shift. Leaders now see a wider curriculum that can stand alongside the core subjects with genuine confidence.

I think we are now getting to the point where our wider curriculum is no longer the poor relation to English and Maths.

What children can now do and say

The most telling evidence of whether a curriculum is working often comes not from data but from conversations with children. At Veritas, leaders point to a noticeable shift in how pupils talk about their learning with more confidence, more detail, and a clearer sense of how ideas connect.

The sequenced curriculum has deepened our children's knowledge; they can talk about their learning in a more confident, meaningful way.

Reflecting on the five years since joining Cornerstones, that sense of children being better equipped to articulate their understanding runs through how the school’s leaders describe the decision.

We joined Cornerstones to give our curriculum a clear intention and the children are just so much more able to talk about their learning. Their breadth of understanding is just deeper, and we see greater coverage and how it all links together. They just seem so much more confident.

Summary

Veritas’s story will resonate with any school that has invested real energy in its curriculum, only to find that engagement and knowledge retention are not the same thing. The move to Cornerstones wasn’t about abandoning what the school valued. It was about giving that ambition a structure strong enough to hold it.

For headteachers asking whether an established curriculum can work in their school without flattening what makes it distinctive, Veritas offers a reassuring answer. The school’s character is still there. What’s changed is that the knowledge children gain now matches the enthusiasm with which it is taught.