The Opening Minds curriculum features five categories of
competences: learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing
situations and managing information. Focusing on competences
means that Opening Minds teaching emphasises the ability to
understand and to do, rather than just the transmission of
knowledge. These competences are broad areas of capability,
developed in classrooms through a mixture of instruction and
practical experience: children plan their work, organise their
own time and explore their own ways of learning. Subject
boundaries are less defined than in traditional curriculum
teaching, with schools often integrating the teaching of several
subjects together into modules or topics, where competences can
be developed through the exploration of common themes.
Crucially, the input of teachers and the individual needs of
schools are central to the planning of each Opening Minds
project. Five key competences Each competence category contains
a number of individual competences, which are expressed