Our Schools > Curriculum/Learning Programs > Horizons of Hope > Curriculum

The curriculum is the common set of knowledge and skills that are required by all students for lifelong learning, social development, and active and informed citizenship.

Curriculum encompasses intended, enacted, experienced, assessed and achieved elements. Each of these elements is responsive (Queensland Government, Department of Education and Training, 2009) to the others providing students with multiple opportunities for enriched and diverse learning pathways. All learners are entitled to a quality curriculum, enabled by formal curriculum frameworks.

Curriculum design meaningfully and purposefully interprets formal curricula to suit the learner and their local context. The learning community in a Catholic school is given the opportunity to critically engage in a dialogue with the tradition and the world, while making sense of and taking control of their lives.

A key aspect of curriculum design in a Catholic school is to challenge learners to explore and consider deep questions, and big ideas. These questions centre around key issues, enabling learners to interpret and make meaning of their lives, the world and their social contexts as well as their religious traditions, responding with openness and empathy to others. This integration of life, culture and faith, in today’s globalised context is understood to be at the heart of the meaning-making process.