Coherence links

3 ways to make links between subjects across the whole school curriculum to achieve coherence

Jun 18, 2026

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This is a guest post by Curriculum expert and former Vice Principal, Aidan Severs. If you’d like to write for us, head to the bottom of this post.

Forgive me for mentioning them, but when it comes to curriculum planning, Ofsted have a fair bit to say. In this series (about curriculum and teaching techniques) we’ve already looked at how your fellow members sequence curriculum so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before, but there’s a curious bit of terminology used in the schools inspection toolkit: it speaks of a ‘coherently planned and sequenced’ curriculum. And it’s that idea of coherency that it is useful to zoom in on.

You see, it speaks about coherency in reference to ‘the curriculum’ by which it definitely means the whole-school curriculum (as well as individual subject curriculums/curricula). As a teacher, it’s relatively simple to think of your own subject’s curriculum and the extent to which it is coherent. But what does it mean for a whole-school curriculum to be coherent, and more importantly, why might that matter to you in your subject?

Before we answer that (rather huge) question, let’s first just make sure we’re all on the same page about what ‘coherent’ means: the Cambridge Dictionary (I had to go with theirs because the Oxford one isn’t free online) says that ‘If… a plan is coherent, it is clear and carefully considered, and each part of it connects or follows in a natural or reasonable way’.

So, back to our question, why might a specialist teacher of a single subject care whether or not the content they are teaching connects to content across the curriculum - to content taught in other subjects?

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Curriculum coherence: making links across the whole school

Pupils often think that what they learn in one subject bears no relevance to another, but we know this isn’t true. Often, pupils fail to see how content across different subjects connects together, helping them to learn new things and providing them with a web of knowledge and skills that sets them up for life. If teachers don’t make explicit connections between what pupils learn across the different curriculum subjects, they won’t make the connections themselves, and even more importantly, they risk not finding isolated episodes of learning meaningful.

I’m sure that as you teach your students your subject you want them to find meaning in it; you want them to be motivated to learn it. You’ll also want them to think your subject has intent and purpose and is worthwhile - it’s when this is missing that pupils become disengaged and demotivated, and all the other negativity that comes with that.

Knowing where connections can be made between your subject and other subjects could bring your lessons, and your pupil’s learning to life. But where to start? Surely no one expects me to know the entire whole-school curriculum well enough to make those connections? I hear you say.

Perhaps you’re right - that is a bit of a tall order for time-poor teachers. Luckily, Owen Jones has a solution.

Owen, former Vice Principal (Now Principal) at Northampton Academy, has implemented some practical ways to help teachers (and pupils) to have a better understanding of the bigger curriculum picture so that they can ensure that what they teach is connected to what other teachers in other subjects teach.

1. Whole-Year Curriculum Overviews

One of Northampton Academy’s curriculum principles is coherence. Their website explains:

So, for each year group, Owen and his team of curriculum leaders have made the ultimate set of documents for teachers who don’t have time to go digging through each subject’s long-, medium- and short-term plans, but do have time to quickly skim through an overview of everything that is covered in the year.

In this document it is super-easy to spot the connections between subjects: like how Chemistry talks about atomic structure and then in the next term Physics builds on this by covering atomic structure and particle models of matter. Or how in Geography pupils study energy and water resource management, after pupils have learned about food sources and production in Food & Nutrition.

The benefit of having such a document for each year group is that teachers can also see at a glance what has been taught in previous years as well as what will be taught in the future. This helps teachers to ensure that what they teach builds on prior knowledge and becomes the foundation for future learning.

And the great thing is, the creation of this document shouldn’t be a daunting task. All of this information will exist somewhere on one document or another, it’s just a case of working together as a team to pull it all together into this one-stop-curriculum-shop doc that teachers actually will have time to use. Perhaps a document like this already exists in your school - in that case you can begin right away to get a better idea of where the content you teach fits into the bigger picture of the whole-school curriculum.

Would someone else find this helpful?

2. Whole-School Aligned Curriculum Intent Statements

One question that Owen asked himself was ‘How do you ensure students and teachers do not see each lesson as a standalone period of learning but that each lesson forms part of a wider pattern of learning?’

We’ve already seen how the curriculum overviews help to answer that question, but just one kind of document does not a well-rounded approach make. Owen didn’t stop there. He realised that if pupils were to understand the bigger picture then teachers needed to understand the bigger picture. And if teachers were to understand the bigger picture, then it needed to be made explicit.

Another key question came into play: “Why are we learning this subject?”

Owen recognised that a bigger picture is made up of smaller parts which all need to be understood on their own as well as together. He also realised that ‘as teachers, you’ve only got to remember the intent of your subject. The topics you’re teaching. For children, they’ve got to remember that ten times [for each of the subjects they are learning]!’

His solution? Short, student-friendly, centrally-aligned intent statements. Look at these two examples from English and Music, and notice the similarities: communication and expression are related concepts, as are diversity and the development of one’s own character

And it’s easy to see how these two statements, although unique and subject-specific tie into the academy’s overall curriculum intent as shared on their website:

For example, the English and Music intent statements, in their focus on diversity and character development, provide subject-specific examples of how those subjects work together to nourish the whole person and their individual talents. The mentions of communication and expression show how these two subjects will prepare pupils to ‘enter into the conversation of mankind’.

When teachers and pupils have such clear examples of how the work they are doing in each subject helps them to meet a common set of aims, learning has a much greater chance of feeling meaningful to the pupils. You see, it’s not just about how the content connects, but how the intended outcomes align. When pupils recognise that every teacher is trying to help them be themselves, express themselves and improve themselves, things become a whole lot more purposeful. That’s why teachers at Northampton Academy share their ‘why’ regularly, and that’s why the statements are short and to the point.

3. Consistency Across Subjects

“Not another one!” It was music to Owen’s ears when he heard a student receive yet another subject’s long-term plan roadmap. Sure, it was a single subject roadmap, and it didn’t connect the learning from that subject to another, but the pupil could see that there was alignment - consistency - across the school. Perhaps this was the fifth or sixth he’d been given a roadmap to stick into the front of his book.

Make no mistake, the kids are alright, and they see what’s going on across the school. Unlike you they are little nomads, tripping around the school on a daily basis, observing what goes on in Maths and English and Science and RE and PE and Art and Geography… and the rest. They are the best arbiters of consistency that schools have - yep, even better than SLT. They’ll tell you in a heartbeat that ‘we don’t do it like that in History’ and that Mr. Smith in Physics hasn’t made us do that. You want the truth, you ask the pupils.

But why does that matter? Well, if you want the children to think that everything’s connected, and that what happens in Chemistry is as important as what happens in PSHE, then consistency matters. If they see teachers, and the school as a whole, treating subjects equally and taking the same approaches across the board, they will do the same. They are more likely to apply themselves in IT as much as in D&T. If a particular subject isn’t seen to be in line, students may treat it as such: a doss lesson, a GCSE result that doesn’t matter, or even a subject to drop altogether when GCSEs come along.

The curriculum designers at your school may have made links within and between subjects, and may have even made them explicit in your medium- and short-term plans, and you as a teacher may be pointed directly towards how the content you teach links to content other subjects have taught, and you might explain those links day in, day out to your students, and that’s all good… but if the pupils themselves are on the look-out for these links, and are aware that subjects are interconnected, and they are thinking hard about which content connects, then you’re on to a winner.

Consistency across subjects sends a signal loud and clear: all subjects are important and there are no greater or lesser subjects. And when this is made obvious, not in words, but by actions, you have a much firmer foundation for convincing students that what they are learning in your lesson is not standalone, but is interconnected to ideas, theories, facts and skills that they might learn in other subjects.

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Doing Your Bit In Your Subject To Contribute Towards a Coherent Curriculum

So, where does that leave us?

If a coherent whole-school curriculum is one where each part connects and follows in a natural and meaningful way, then making those connections visible becomes part of every teacher’s job. The good news is that you don’t need to become an expert in every subject to contribute to that coherence.

You could gather a copy of each subject’s plans, and do the following task, but that might take some time (which I know you don’t have). You could get together with colleagues from across different departments and ask some simple questions with a particular topic, unit or year group in mind (but again, you might not have the power to orchestrate such a meeting of minds). What is more realistic is that, over time, as and when you bump into colleagues who teach other subjects, you could ask one or two of these pertinent questions to help you to build a picture of how the content from your subject links to content taught in other subjects:

What knowledge, skills or concepts from other subjects help pupils to understand this content more deeply?
What links are pupils already likely to have encountered elsewhere in the curriculum?
Which connections do pupils consistently fail to make for themselves?
Where could we explicitly reference learning from another subject to strengthen understanding?
Are there opportunities for pupils to apply knowledge or skills learned elsewhere?
What common themes, values or curriculum intentions connect our subjects together?
Are there parts of the curriculum that currently feel isolated or disconnected from the wider pattern of learning?

And if you’re a lead, and you can bring staff together from across the disciplines, you could use these questions to really begin to develop that coherent curriculum that Ofsted are looking for, and more importantly, your students will really benefit from.

As you work through these questions, you’ll begin to see how learning in one subject supports and enriches learning in another. You may discover opportunities to adjust timings, strengthen references to prior learning, or create more deliberate links between topics. In some cases, you might even identify areas where departments could collaborate more closely to maximise impact.

Don’t stop at content, either. Consider the bigger picture of why subjects are taught. When pupils understand not only how subjects connect, but also how they collectively contribute to their development as learners and individuals, the curriculum becomes far more meaningful.

And remember, coherence isn’t achieved through a single document or initiative. It’s built through countless small decisions made by teachers every day: drawing attention to a link, revisiting prior learning, using consistent approaches, and helping pupils see that their education is not a collection of separate lessons, but a connected journey of learning. And when pupils start spotting those connections for themselves, that’s when a coherent curriculum truly comes to life.

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