Curriculum for Wales (2022–present)

[9] Within a basic framework of goals and learning areas, it give schools freedom to develop their own curriculum to suit the needs of their pupils.

[11] Instruction is grouped into six different areas: The only specific subjects which all schools are obliged to teach are the English and Welsh languages along with: Other changes include a greater emphasis on the history of Wales[14][15] and ethnic minority groups,[16] which reports by Estyn in previous years suggested had often been poor,[17] and the removal of parents' right to opt out their children from sex education classes.

[18] One of Donaldson's initial recommendations for the new curriculum was that school should be made into more of a single "journey" for a child, rather than the way he argued pupils and teachers had previously seen the process as a series of shorter chunks.

[19] The key stages into which a child's time at school were previously broken are replaced with "progression steps" with guidance of what level pupils are expected to reach at different ages.

[20] The standardised literary and numeracy tests which seven- to fourteen-year-old children had taken annually since 2013 were replaced in 2021 with personalised online assessments.

Journalists from the news website Wales Online spoke in 2022 to teachers and students at Crickhowell High School which had been using the new curriculum for several years.

The children interviewed felt that the way the curriculum linked subjects together made their studies feel more relevant to them and improved their understanding.

[25] There were also concerns that grouping subjects into faculties could lead to a "dumbing down" of instruction and suggestions that the requirement for schools to develop their own curriculum was an unhelpful distraction.