Best Practice

Reviewing the curriculum: Middle leader focused quality assurance

Curriculum Middle leadership Lesson planning
Curriculum review and quality assurance is a critical factor for all schools. In this article, Claire Harley discusses her work to create a quality assurance process that respects subject difference and middle leader autonomy, but which is comparable across the school


Orchard Mead Academy is an 11 to 16 school in Leicester with a high proportion of Pupil Premium pupils and that serves a diverse community.

Last year I was delighted to be appointed as an assistant principal with my central responsibility being the quality assurance of our curriculum.

While curriculum reviews are not a new process to our school, the pandemic meant that this process had moved online and away from the classroom.

Going forward, we saw this as an opportunity to review how curriculum reviews are undertaken and start afresh this year.

As a doctoral candidate at the University of Nottingham, researching teacher autonomy and research engagement, I felt confident in my ability to link the process more effectively to subject-specific pedagogy. Most importantly, we wanted to create a process that is “done with” – rather than being “done to” – middle leaders.

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