How the Curriculum Centre works

What the Curriculum Centre does

The Curriculum Centre is the engine behind all assessment in School Vault. Without a curriculum installed and assigned to a class, teachers cannot record observations or assessments, and assessment progress percentages do not appear on student profiles.

The Centre gives you three core actions:

• Install, bring a framework from the shared Library into your school's Curriculum Centre
• Clone, create a customisable copy of an installed framework so you can adjust it to your school's needs
• Archive, retire a framework at end of year so it is no longer active, while preserving all historical records

The 10 built-in curriculum frameworks

Install vs Clone, when to use each

Install gives your school a read-only copy of the official framework. You cannot edit the indicators or domains of an installed framework, it is the "official" version. This is correct for most schools.

Clone creates an editable copy that belongs to your school. Use cloning when:

• You want to add custom indicators to the EYFS framework to match your school's specific learning intentions
• You need to translate indicator names into your school's preferred language
• You want to run a slightly different version of a framework for a new academic year without overwriting the previous year's assessment data

How the Curriculum Centre is organised

The Curriculum Centre has two sections:

• Library, the shared pool of all 10 built-in frameworks, available to install
• Installed Curricula, the frameworks currently installed or cloned into your school, ready to assign to classes

Assessment models in School Vault

Each framework uses one or more assessment models:

• Judgement scale, teacher chooses from a fixed set of descriptors (e.g. Emerging / Expected / Exceeding in EYFS)
• Numeric / Rubric, teacher enters a number or selects a rubric level (e.g. 1–4 in Cambridge)
• Checklist, teacher ticks whether an objective has been introduced, is in progress, or has been mastered
• Observation, teacher writes a narrative note linked to a learning area
• Mixed, a combination of the above models within a single framework

The model used by a framework determines how the assessment recording UI looks for teachers and how progress percentages are calculated. See article 2.7 for a deeper comparison of models across frameworks.

Common mistakes

• Installing a curriculum but not assigning it to a classroom, teachers see no assessment indicators until the assignment is made.
• Editing an installed (non-cloned) framework, the system will warn you that changes affect all schools using this framework. Always clone first if you want to customise.
• Using two different frameworks for the same class in the same term, each classroom is assigned exactly one curriculum at a time.
• Archiving a curriculum before the term ends, this hides assessment records from teachers mid-term. Only archive at end of year.