This article launches a new campaign strand for Creating Excellence focused on curriculum coherence and leadership alignment, building on earlier work around dual professionalism. It argues that curriculum with purpose is not about adding more, but about aligning strategy, quality and workforce confidence through better design.
Across further education and skills, change is no longer episodic; it is constant. Reform cycles overlap. Expectations shift. Workforce capacity is stretched. Yet despite years of policy movement, one issue continues to undermine impact:
The lack of curriculum coherence in FE continues to undermine impact.
Curriculum is still too often treated as a delivery challenge rather than a leadership responsibility. Something to implement, adjust or comply with, rather than something to design intentionally. If 2026 is to represent genuine progress for learners and the workforce, curriculum coherence must move from a technical conversation to a strategic one.
From curriculum content to curriculum coherence
When curriculum is discussed, the focus is often on what is taught: qualifications, standards, outcomes and coverage. But curriculum coherence in FE is not primarily about content, it is about connection.
A coherent curriculum helps learners understand:
- how learning links to work and progression
- how skills are activated in real contexts
- how decisions and transitions are supported over time.
In this sense, curriculum acts as pathway architecture. Learners are not just completing units; they are navigating a system. When that system is fragmented, learners are required to carry unnecessary cognitive and emotional load, particularly those already facing disadvantage.
This is where curriculum coherence becomes an inclusion issue, not simply a quality one.
Curriculum with purpose starts upstream
Too many reform conversations begin with performance measures: targets, accountability frameworks and compliance indicators. While these matter, they are downstream effects.
Curriculum with purpose begins earlier, asking:
- What confidence and judgement should learners leave with?
- What capability must the workforce have to activate learning meaningfully?
- What progression routes is the curriculum genuinely preparing people for?
When purpose is unclear, alignment breaks down. Strategy exists at senior level, while practice becomes localised, improvised and overly reliant on individual effort. This is not a workforce failing, it is a design gap.
Curriculum coherence provides the bridge between strategic intent and lived practice.
Workforce confidence as a system condition
Workforce confidence is often framed as something to be improved through training or CPD. While professional development is essential, this framing places responsibility in the wrong place.
Confidence is not only an individual attribute — it is a system condition.
Where curriculum design is coherent, expectations are clear and staff understand how their role supports learner progression, confidence is reinforced. Where curriculum is fragmented or overloaded, even experienced practitioners experience erosion over time.
This is why dual professionalism matters so deeply. Staff are not only subject or vocational specialists; they are facilitators of learning, judgement and application. Curriculum coherence must support this role, particularly where learning is work-based and the workplace itself forms part of the curriculum.
Learning as lived practice, not abstract delivery
A consistent message emerging across the sector is the need to treat learning as applied and performative, not abstract or disconnected from context.
When the workplace is understood as curriculum:
- knowledge gains value through use
- confidence develops through activation
- assessment becomes confirmation of capability, not recall.
This approach is especially important for learners experiencing compound disadvantage, where belonging, identity and confidence shape progression as much as qualifications alone.
Curriculum coherence here is not about standardisation for its own sake. It is about ensuring strategy translates into lived experience consistently enough to reduce inequality, and flexibly enough to reflect real contexts.
Why 2026 is a critical moment for curriculum coherence in FE
The year ahead brings a significant convergence:
- modular reform and assessment change
- renewed focus on progression, employability and inclusion
- increased scrutiny of workforce capability and leadership alignment.
If curriculum continues to be treated as an operational output, these pressures risk deepening fragmentation. But if curriculum coherence becomes a leadership priority, 2026 can mark a genuine turning point where strategy, quality and workforce capability reinforce one another.
Curriculum coherence is a leadership responsibility
Curriculum coherence in FE is not about adopting another framework. It is about adopting a leadership stance.
It requires leaders to move upstream:
- from delivery to design
- from compliance to coherence
- from individual confidence to system confidence.
When curriculum is designed with purpose, it becomes a stabilising force, reducing friction, restoring agency and embedding inclusion into the architecture rather than retrofitting it through support.
What next?
If you are reviewing curriculum, strategy or workforce development, step back and ask whether your curriculum is coherent by design or held together by effort.
If you’d like support exploring curriculum coherence, leadership alignment or workforce confidence in your organisation, get in touch to discuss a strategic curriculum review or leadership briefing tailored to your context.