🔒 Only staff with the Create, edit and delete child development curriculum permission can create, edit or archive curricula. The Curriculum Builder is available on our Premium (limited to one custom curriculum) and Professional (unlimited custom curricula) packages. You can read more about pricing here!
Every nursery is unique, and your curriculum should reflect what matters most in your setting. Some nurseries build a curriculum from scratch, while others adapt an existing framework to suit their children and approach. Many experts recommend creating a curriculum tailored to your own practice to support a consistent experience for children.
With the Curriculum builder, you can:
Let staff browse your curriculum as reference material when creating observations and assessments
Link your custom learning areas to observations and see them in the tally
Set up one or more assessment configurations using your custom learning areas, and view these in the progress report
Creating a Curriculum
To create a curriculum:
Head to Leaning in your sidebar
Click on Curriculum builder
From here, click on Create curriculum to get started
You can begin with a template or start from scratch. Both options allow you to create the same final curriculum.
Templates give you a suggested structure based on Development Matters
Designing your own lets you build your own structure from an empty space
Adding Learning Areas
Once you've given your curriculum a title, you can add learning areas to form the core structure of your curriculum. If you're creating a curriculum from a template, you can choose from the default learning areas (left). If you're configuring your curriculum from scratch, you can customise your own learning areas (right).
If you choose to link a learning area, you will be able to turn it on later in Settings under Learning frameworks. Linked learning areas appear in the dropdown when staff create observations.
Adding Subareas
Inside each learning area, you can add Pages and Subareas.
A page is the content staff can browse in the reference material
A subarea acts like a folder that groups learning content into more layers.
For example, the Literacy learning area may be divided into Reading and Writing subareas
You can build up to four structural layers in total.
💡 You cannot link observations or assessments to subareas. Only learning areas can be linked
Adding Pages
You can add pages:
At the top level, alongside your learning areas
Inside individual learning areas
Inside subareas
Pages are what staff see when browsing the reference material while creating observations or assessments. You can also add activities to a page by selecting Add activity.
💡 Rich text makes your pages easier to read. For example, by using bold, bullet points or headings
Saving a Curriculum
You can save your curriculum as a draft to come back to it later. It will not save automatically, so make sure you save before exiting. If you are logged out while editing, you will return to the same place when you next log in on that device.
Your curriculum will show in the My curriculum section, where you can see when it was created, who made the latest edits, and its status.
After saving, you can switch to View mode to see how it will appear in the reference material.
Uploading a Curriculum
When you are ready, select Save and upload.
After upload, staff will be able to see the curriculum in the Curriculum builder, but they will not see it in observations or elsewhere until you enable it in Settings.
You can continue editing your curriculum even after it has been uploaded.
Archiving a Curriculum
To archive a curriculum, in your Curriculum builder overview, select the ... next to a curriculum and choose Archive. Archived curricula cannot be used anywhere in Famly and will be removed from assessment settings and reference material.
By clicking on Include archived, you'll be able to see any archived curricula and unarchive them by clicking on ... then Unarchive.
Hiding a Published Curriculum
If you need a published curriculum to be used only for assessment configurations or observation frameworks, you can hide it from staff who do not have Curriculum Builder permissions. This helps keep the reference material tidy.
Enabling Your Curriculum in Settings
Once uploaded, your curriculum appears in Settings. You can enable it in three places:
Assessment settings (once you create your own configuration)
Reference material
Learning frameworks
Learning areas must be linked during creation to appear in assessment settings and learning frameworks.
💡 Enabling your curriculum works the same way as other built-in frameworks, such as Development Matters, EYFS and CoEL.
Using a Custom Curriculum in Assessments
You can set up assessments using your own curriculum in the same way you do with EYFS.
Step 1: Save and upload your curriculum
Make sure your learning areas are linked so they appear in the Assess against dropdown, and that your curriculum status is Uploaded
Step 2: Create an assessment configuration
Go to Settings → Child Development → Assessment settings.
In the Create your own configuration section, add a title and choose your custom framework in the Assess against dropdown.
If you are getting an error message saying Something went wrong when saving your assessment configuration, this may be due to:
An existing configuration having the same title. Assessment configurations must have unique titles; you will not be able to save a configuration if you already have one with the same title (even if this configuration has been archived)
Not selecting a colour for the Assessment option. Each Assessment option must be assigned a colour to save your configuration
Step 3: Enable your custom configuration
In Assessment settings, toggle on your custom configuration
Step 4: Start creating assessments
When writing an assessment, you'll see your new curriculum at the bottom. You can browse reference material on the right.
Creating an Organisation-Level Curriculum
If you manage multiple settings, you can create a curriculum at organisation level.
Choose your organisation from the dropdown and select Create curriculum.
💡 Only organisation managers can edit and upload it. While in draft, it is visible only to organisation managers. Once uploaded, it appears for all settings and replaces any existing curriculum in those settings.
Each setting still needs to enable the curriculum in Settings individually.
If you only want your curriculum in certain settings, create separate curricula within each chosen setting instead of at organisation level.