The key difference between curriculum and scheme of work is that curriculum refers to the course study, guidelines, lessons, and academic content that have to be taught in a specific course or degree program, whereas scheme of work refers to how the curriculum will be taught.
Curriculum and scheme of work are two important terms in the context of education. Both help teachers to plan the content of a lesson. Overall, a scheme of work comes under the umbrella term of curriculum.
CONTENT
1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Curriculum
3. What is Scheme of Work
4. Curriculum vs Scheme of Work in Tabular Form
5. Summary – Curriculum vs Scheme of Work
What is Curriculum?
A curriculum involves instructional content, materials, resources, lessons, and assessment methods of a specific course or a degree program. It supplies guidelines for educators and teachers in the academic field to provide an effective academic experience to students. A curriculum includes the goals, methods, materials, and methods of assessment of a particular course or a degree program. At the same time, it helps to enhance the learning of students.
Many countries around the world have national curricula for primary and secondary education systems. A curriculum is considered as one of the main elements of effective learning and teaching. But they have to be renewed frequently and encourage greater standardization.
What is Scheme of Work?
Scheme of work refers to the structure and content of an academic course. A scheme of work is taken from the curriculum, and it focuses on how the curriculum will be converted into learning activities. Thus, a scheme of work includes sequencing of content, amount of time spent in each topic and lesson, and how the specific learning objectives are achieved. Most of the time, teachers convert the curriculum to a series of lesson plans and learning activities. Nevertheless, in some cases, curriculum and educational authorities provide a template for translating the curriculum into lesson plans and activities. For example, although all state schools in a particular country follow the same curriculum, they may have different schemes of work. Therefore, learning activities can also be different from one school to another, although they work under the same national curriculum.
Scheme of work helps teachers to plan out their work and to schedule the learning activities for the students. It should also contain all aims and objectives of the curriculum. At the same time, an effective scheme of work should maintain a certain level of difficulty in order to make students face challenging learning activities.
What is the Difference Between Curriculum and Scheme of Work?
The key difference between the curriculum and the scheme of work is that a curriculum brings out the course study, course content, guidelines, and lessons of a specific academic course or an academic program, whereas a scheme of work shows how the curriculum is taught in the classroom. That is; although the curriculum includes academic content and theoretical approaches of the academic program, a scheme of work illustrates the practical side of the components of the curriculum. So, in brief, a scheme of work comes under the umbrella term of the curriculum.
However, even though the same national curriculum is followed in state schools, the scheme of work used in different schools can be different from each other. This is because the national curriculum is provided by the national education authority, while the schemes of work are prepared by the educators in particular schools.
Below is a summary of the difference between curriculum and scheme of work in tabular form for side by side comparison.
Summary – Curriculum vs Scheme of Work
The key difference between curriculum and scheme of work is that curriculum brings out the study guide, academic content, guidelines, and methods of assessing a certain academic course or program, whereas scheme of work shows how the curriculum will be taught using different learning activities.
Reference:
1. “Instruction & Assessment.” Rhode Island Department of Education
2. “Curriculum Definition.” The Glossary of Education Reform.