What learning is. Drawn from the National Curriculum where it exists, from synthesised consensus across awarding bodies where it doesn’t, and from NEO-original / statutory frames where neither apply.
Per the v0.3 schema, the Curriculum spine is the canonical layer of the vault. Awarding-body specifications sit at Overlays and wikilink onto canonical nodes. The same canonical content can carry many overlays, or none.
The six branches
- Key Stage 3 — National Curriculum strands for Years 7–9
- Key Stage 4 — synthetic NC defined by union of overlays
- Key Stage 5 (Phase 2)
- Life and Work — functional skills, employability, independent living, financial literacy, citizenship; canonical in their own right, not overlay-derived
- Relational and Symbolic — Relating Intelligently, Girls in Green Futures, Cornerstones Electives; NEO-original canonical curriculum, mostly Verse-ality Certified
- Statutory — RSHE statutory strand, parallel to NC and not subordinate to it
Why “life-and-work” and “relational-and-symbolic” are canonical, not overlay
Functional Skills, ASDAN-style portfolio work, and life-skills content are not overlays of the National Curriculum — they are alternative canonical content. Treating them as overlays would imply the NC is the only legitimate curriculum and everything else is a derivative test of it. That’s not what NEO believes about its own offer. Relating Intelligently and Girls in Green Futures are not awarding-body-specifiable; their content is the learning, not a test of it.
See Tagging Schema v0.3 §2.3 for the full reasoning.
Operational note
NEO does not run exams or hold awarding-body registration. The vault separates what we teach (this branch) from how external bodies assess it (Overlays). For Functional Skills, the operational arrangement is: NEO teaches the curriculum, learners register via Pass Functional Skills through their LA or commissioner, with Pearson Edexcel as the chosen awarding body.