What it is
The programme of inquiry maps every unit of inquiry the school teaches, across every year group, against the six transdisciplinary themes. Read down a column and you see one year group's year. Read across a row and you see how a theme develops as children move up the school.
The six themes are: who we are; where we are in place and time; how we express ourselves; how the world works; how we organize ourselves; and sharing the planet. Each year group inquires into each theme, so the document is a grid rather than a list.
The parts of a unit within it
Each cell in the grid holds a unit, and each unit carries a small number of components that do specific work.
- Central idea — one sentence expressing an enduring understanding, written so it transfers beyond the examples used to teach it.
- Lines of inquiry — usually three, each opening a distinct direction rather than restating the central idea.
- Key concepts — drawn from a defined set including form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective and responsibility. They shape the questions asked.
- Related concepts — the subject-specific ideas the unit needs.
- Approaches to learning and learner profile attributes — what is being developed alongside the content.
Where the drift happens
Two failures are common and both are invisible from inside a single year group. The first is repetition: the same key concept carrying four units in a row because each was planned by a different teacher in a different term. The second is absence — a concept or a theme that no unit meaningfully touches anywhere in the school.
Neither shows up when you read one planner. They only appear when you look at the whole grid, which is exactly the thing nobody has time to do in the middle of a term.
Reviewing it without a two-day meeting
A useful review answers three questions. Is each theme genuinely inquired into at every year level, or is one being covered in name only? Are the key concepts distributed, or has one become the default? Does the vertical story make sense — does a theme actually develop as children get older, or does it restart each year?
If the answers require reading forty documents, the review will not happen annually, and a programme of inquiry that is not reviewed annually stops describing what the school teaches within about two years.
The exhibition
In the final year of the programme, students undertake the exhibition — an extended, collaborative inquiry that draws together what the programme has taught them. It is a genuine assessment of the whole programme, not just of that year group.
It is also the clearest test of whether the programme of inquiry has done its job. If students arrive at the exhibition without the research and self-management skills to run their own inquiry, that is a finding about the previous five years rather than about the exhibition.
