Draft Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) Frameworks for RMPS and RCRE now available
Scotland’s Curriculum is deliberately moving away from Experiences, Outcomes and Benchmarks to a concept-based curriculum. This will be a Know-Do-Understand (KDU) model informed by overarching big ideas in each of the curriculum areas. Co-design groups of teachers, practitioners and partners have begun work on the refreshed curriculum. In early November 2026, the first draft of KDU frameworks for the curriculum areas was released.
KDU Model – Curriculum Improvement Cycle
The Big Ideas
These provide a rationale for the ‘why’ and ‘what’ children and young people learn within a curriculum area. They capture the most important overarching understandings and insights that articulate the way that a curriculum area makes sense of the world, the significance of this learning and how it contributes to development of the four capacities.
Understand
Understand statements describe the relationship between concepts. The concepts that form the understand statements are drawn from the Big Ideas. Understand statements capture the learning across a curriculum level and are transferable across different case studies, contexts, cultures and times. This transferability is what gives them power, enabling learners to use their knowledge beyond the classroom.
Know
This part of the knot outlines the facts, definitions, examples or case studies that children and young people need to know in order to build and illustrate their understanding.
Do
This part of the knot outlines the things that children and young people learn to do within a discipline. These practical actions and experiences sit alongside knowledge and contribute to the development of understanding. This includes curriculum area and subject specific skills, processes and strategies.
The draft frameworks cover 13 curriculum areas plus Roman Catholic Religious Education (RCRE).
Religious Moral Education (RME) will now be known throughout all levels as Religious, Moral and Philosophical Education (RMPS). Teachers, practitioners and partners have been part of co-creation groups to design the curriculum, and we are now currently in the first round of a sample-based feedback process and provide feedback on the November draft curriculum materials: Building Scotland’s Curriculum and the Curriculum Area KDU Framework by Wednesday 18 November.
To allow educators and churches an opportunity to compare the content of Christianity within the current Es and Os and the proposed KDU frameworks, we have uploaded the documents here for ease of reference.
RMPS Proposed Frameworks – scroll down to the relevant pages
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Early-Level-November-2026-1 from page 78 – 79
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-First-Level-November-2026 from page 90- 91
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Second-Level-November-2026 from page 110 – 111
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Third-Level-November-2026 (1) from page 74-76
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Fourth-Level-November-2026 from page 61 – 62
RCRE Proposed Frameworks – scroll down to the relevant pages
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Early-Level-November-2026-1 from page 74 – 77
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-First-Level-November-2026 from page 81- 90
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Second-Level-November-2026 from page 101- 109
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Third-Level-November-2026 (1) from page 68 – 73
CIC-Draft-Technical-Framework-Fourth-Level-November-2026 from page 56 – 60
Existing Experiences and Outcomes for RME/RMPS
[All blogs on our website are the personal view of the writer and do not necessarily represent a position taken by CVE Scotland]