Built on the science of learning
Every design decision in the curriculum traces to named evidence about how children learn. The sources, the numbers and their limits are on this page.
Ten commitments, built into every lesson
The curriculum is governed by a written charter: ten commitments, each anchored to named evidence, and each built into how every lesson is made.
Explicit teaching first
New content is taught fully and explicitly — small steps, worked examples, guided practice, high success rates. Fifty years of evidence, from Project Follow Through to the largest modern meta-analyses, supports this as the default for novices.
Guidance that fades
Worked example, then supported practice, then independent problem-solving, then transfer. Rich open tasks come after fluency, in line with the worked-example and expertise-reversal research.
Retrieval practice, every day
Every lesson opens with retrieval practice across expanding intervals — yesterday, last week, weeks ago, last term — planned across the whole year.
Knowledge-rich and cumulative
Comprehension and problem-solving are built from knowledge. The F–10 knowledge and vocabulary spine sequences what every lesson can assume, so each one builds on what came before — at grade level for every student.
Structured literacy
Systematic synthetic phonics with decodable texts to learn to read; knowledge and vocabulary to read to learn; explicit, sentence-first writing.
Maths fluency as the gateway to reasoning
Number-fact automaticity frees working memory for thinking. Fluency practice is accuracy-first, low-stakes and private.
Evidence, with its boundary conditions
Guided play in the early years. Problem-first openings only for older students on rich concepts, always followed by explicit consolidation — the conditions under which the trials found benefits.
One class, one curriculum, real differentiation
Every lesson ships with enabling and extending scaffolds on the same grade-level task: strong whole-class teaching with targeted support, rather than separate pathways per student.
Built to the charter
Every lesson is authored within these commitments and checked against them before it goes anywhere.
Aligned to how Australia now teaches
Consistent with AERO's model of learning and state explicit-teaching policies, and aligned to your syllabus — Australian Curriculum v9 today, with NSW, Victorian Curriculum 2.0 and WA to follow.
Authored against four benchmark systems
For every strand and every year level, the spine is set at the most demanding line the evidence supports across four systems. The local syllabus is then mapped against the result.
- Where the spine goes beyond the Australian Curriculum, the position is anchored to at least two benchmark systems or trial evidence.
- Eight mathematics strands and six English dimensions, Foundation to Year 10 — one connected progression from a child's first year of school to their last.
- 130,000+ words of benchmark research built from primary sources — syllabus documents, practice guides and the trial literature.
Singapore
MOE Primary and Secondary syllabuses — the discipline of fewer topics taught deeper, CPA progression and the bar model.
England
The National Curriculum with NCETM's Ready-to-Progress criteria — the clearest published ladder of written methods and fluency expectations.
United States
Common Core's focus and coherence, and the Core Knowledge tradition of building comprehension on sequenced knowledge domains.
Australia
Australian Curriculum v9, verified line by line. Every lesson satisfies it; the spine goes further where the benchmarks do.
A curriculum that holds together, year to year
Before any lesson was built on it, the spine was checked end to end — its continuity, its sources and its positions.
Continuity
Each year begins exactly where the previous year ends, across every strand and dimension, Foundation to Year 10.
Sources
Every citation and figure checked against the primary documents — the syllabuses, practice guides and trials themselves.
Positions
Anywhere the spine goes beyond the local syllabus, the position is backed by at least two benchmark systems or trial evidence.
Each approach carries its own weight of evidence
The engine also carries partner frameworks, each encoded to its own published standard — sequence, emphases and non-negotiables intact.
Explicit Instruction
Structured, teacher-led sequences that make expert thinking visible — clear intentions, worked examples, guided then independent practice, and frequent checks for understanding.
Rosenshine's Principles
Instruction grounded in cognitive science — daily review, new material in small steps, questioning, models, guided practice, and spaced cumulative review.
Inquiry-Based Learning
Students investigate authentic questions, gather and weigh evidence, and construct understanding — with structured scaffolds that keep productive struggle productive.
Key sources(full bibliography available): Rosenshine (2012); Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006); Stockard et al. (2018); Yang et al. (2021); Rohrer et al. (2020); Dunlosky et al. (2013); Grissmer et al. (2023); Castles, Rastle & Nation (2018); Ehri et al. (2001); Graham & Perin (2007); Skene et al. (2022); Sinha & Kapur (2021); Clements & Sarama's learning trajectories; Beck, McKeown & Kucan on vocabulary; Hochman & Wexler's The Writing Revolution; AERO practice guides; Grattan Institute Ending the Lesson Lottery (2022), The Reading Guarantee (2024) and The Maths Guarantee (2025); What Works Clearinghouse practice guides.
This curriculum is evidence-informed: built on validated pedagogy, with the constraints above enforced in the engine. An independent efficacy study across Australian pilot schools begins in 2027, and the results will be published.
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