Curriculum monitoring is one of those things that gets talked about a lot in primary schools but does not always mean the same thing in different buildings. In some schools it is a formal cycle of observations and book scrutinies. In others it is a more fluid, ongoing process. In some schools it may still be a folder that someone updates once a term before a governors meeting but without question, this now will be a very rare setup.
So what is it, exactly? And what is it actually for?
At its most straightforward, curriculum monitoring is about finding out whether what you have planned is actually happening in classrooms. It’s the gap between the curriculum on paper and the curriculum as it is lived by children and teachers each day.
That gap is almost always there. Teachers make professional judgements, time runs short, some topics get more space than others. Monitoring is how you find those gaps - so you can decide what to do about them.
Before Ofsted’s 2019 Education Inspection Framework, a lot of schools were focused primarily on pupil progress data as the main measure of school quality. The shift to a curriculum-centred framework changed that significantly.
Inspectors now look for schools to be able to talk clearly about their curriculum - not just that it covers the national curriculum, but that there is coherent thinking behind the sequencing, that teachers understand the intent, and that it is being implemented in the way leaders envisaged.
Since then, there has been a growing focus on how well the curriculum works for all pupils, particularly those with SEND - but the core shift towards curriculum thinking remains.
Christine Counsell, whose writing on curriculum thinking has been widely influential across the profession, described the curriculum as a body of knowledge arranged with an eye to future learning. The implication for monitoring is that it should not just ask whether children learned things, but whether they are building on what they have already learned in a way that makes sense.
Curriculum monitoring is not the same as performance management. It is not about catching teachers out or finding problems to report upwards. Done well, it should feel collaborative - a shared attempt to understand what is happening and make it better.
It is also not a single activity. Lesson observations are one form of evidence. So are pupil conversations, book looks, staff discussions, and simply walking around a school and noticing what is on the walls. The most useful monitoring tends to draw on several of these, rather than relying on just one.
When monitoring is working well, subject leaders have a genuine picture of their subject across the school. Not a performance, but a real understanding of where teaching is strong, where children are making connections, and where there are gaps or inconsistencies to address.
That picture takes time to build, and it shifts as the school changes. Which is why the most effective monitoring tends to be ongoing rather than a one-off event. A few moments captured each week, over a term, will often tell you far more than a formal review done once in June.
If you are building that picture over time, it becomes much easier to see what is really happening. Blippit Boards is designed to support that process - helping schools capture and organise those moments as they happen.
