Every nursery is unique, and their curriculums should reflect that. While some nurseries develop their own curriculum from scratch, others may adapt a standard framework to better suit their needs. Experts often recommend that nurseries create their own tailored curriculum to provide the best experience for the children.

In fact, many nurseries already have their own curriculum—over 30% according to our survey last year. However, until now, there hasn’t been a software solution that fully supports the creation and integration of custom curriculums. That’s where the Curriculum builder comes in.

With the curriculum builder you can add your own curriculum to Famly. This will enable you to:

Check out the video below for a guide to the Curriculum builder:

The curriculum builder is available for our UK customers on the Premium and Professional packages. On our Professional package, you can add an unlimited amount of curriculums. On our Premium package, a maximum of one curriculum can be added at a time.

The curriculum builder is only available on desktop. A tablet-friendly version is in the works and will be released in the near future.

Only roles with the 'Create, edit and delete child development curriculum' permission can create, edit and delete curriculums:

Note that everyone with this permission in your setting can edit the curriculum - that way you can collaborate on creating the curriculum.

Roles who can create observations can view uploaded curriculums in the sidebar.

Create a curriculum by clicking the “Create curriculum” button. When creating a curriculum you can choose if the curriculum should be based on a template or if you want to start from scratch. There’s no difference in the curriculum you can create in the end - but the template gives you a suggested structure you can build from (based on Development Matters) and starting from scratch means that it’ll be empty until you add something.

You can add learning areas to your curriculum. If you choose to 'link' them, this means that, once the curriculum is uploaded, you’ll be able to toggle them on in Settings as Learning frameworks later on. This in turn means that they’ll show up in the dropdown in observations.

Within each learning area you can add pages and/or subareas.

A page is the browsable content that you can read in the reference material. The subareas are ways to add more 'layers' to your curriculum structure, so essentially, they work as folders.

For example, if you browse Birth to 5 matters in the reference material you can see that this has subareas with pages inside.

If you browse Development matters this only has learning areas with pages directly inside each learning area.

You cannot link observations or assessments to subareas - only to your learning areas.

A curriculum can have a maximum of 4 'layers' in total - meaning the max would be:

You can add pages alongside your learning areas* (for example if you want to add an introduction like Development matters does), inside learning areas, and/or inside subareas.

The page that you add is what your staff will be able to browse in the reference material when creating assessments and observations.

Tip: use rich text in your pages to make the content easier to read - with bullet points, bold etc.

You can save your curriculum as a draft so you can get back to it at a later stage. The curriculum does not save automatically so it’s important that you always remember to save it before exiting. If you get logged out while updating a curriculum don’t worry - next time you log back in on the same device it will take you straight to where you left off so you don’t lose what you were working on.

Curious to see how your curriculum will look in the reference material? Once you save it you can go back and view it in view mode. The way it looks when browsing it here, is how it’ll look in your reference material.

When your curriculum is ready click 'save and upload'. You can always edit and update it later even after you upload it. Once you upload it your staff will be able to see it if they go to the Curriculum builder. They will not be able to see it in observations or anywhere else in Child Development until you turn it on in toggles (described below).

Delete a curriculum by clicking on the 3 dots and select 'delete'. You will not be able to use your curriculum anymore if you delete it - it will disappear from your assessment settings, reference material etc. You also cannot retrieve it after deleting - once it’s gone, it’s gone.

After your curriculum has been uploaded it will show up in Settings. You can enable your curriculum in Settings 3 different places - in your assessment settings, reference material and learning frameworks:

Note that you can only enable it in assessment settings and learning frameworks if you’ve selected that your learning areas should be 'linkable' when you built your curriculum:

Enabling you curriculum in Settings works exactly as you’re used to from the pre-added frameworks in Famly - such as Development Matters, EYFS, CoEL etc.

How can you set up your custom curriculum in assessments?

It works in the same way you’re used to with EYFS - the only difference is that you can now set up your own assessment configurations using the framework from your own curriculum!

Here's a step-by-step guide to show you how it's done!

Step 1: Create and 'save and upload' your curriculum

Start by looking for your curriculum name abbreviation in the framework dropdown, remember to keep the boxes checked to make your learning areas 'linkable'

Step 2: Create an assessment configuration in Settings

You’ll find it on your Settings page under Child Development, then Assessment settings. You can choose your own framework under the “Assess against” dropdown.

Step 3: Finish your assessment configuration

If you are getting an error message (Something went wrong) when saving your assessment configuration, this may be due to:

Step 4: Turn on your assessment configuration

You have the option to create one curriculum for all settings in your organisation.

To do this, select your organisation in the dropdown (top left) and click 'Create curriculum'.

Creating a curriculum for the entire organisation means that it is only organisation managers that can edit and upload the curriculum. The curriculum will only be visible to the individual settings when clicking 'Save and upload'. As long as it’s saved as a draft it will only be visible to organisation managers.

Once you upload it it will be visible on the curriculum builder for all settings. Since it’s only possible to have 1 curriculum per setting, this will mean that your organisation curriculum will override the existing curriculums for any settings that already have an uploaded or draft curriculum.

Note: each setting in the organisation still needs to set it up in the Settings (turning it on in reference material, learning frameworks etc). Managers for each setting can turn it on in Settings for their respective setting.

If you only want your curriculum to show for some settings only and not for other settings, you will need to create the curriculum for each of these settings.

Organisation curriculums will always be uploaded for all settings in the organisation once uploaded.