Guest: Melanie Moore, founder and Curriculum Director of Cornerstones Education, which publishes commercial primary curriculum schemes. Published 11 November 2024. Inspection has changed since this session: it refers to the education inspection framework, which Ofsted replaced with its renewed framework and report cards from November 2025.
What this covers
- What cultural capital is, and Pierre Bourdieu's theory behind it.
- What Mel took from the Reggio Children approach in northern Italy about learning through real-life and local experience.
- How cultural capital was placed in the education inspection framework at the time.
- Practical ways to build a curriculum rich in cultural capital.
Before you act on it
Check curriculum plans against the national curriculum framework for key stages 1 to 4 and Ofsted's current school inspection toolkit.
About the session
Lucy and Jonathan discuss Cultural capital and the curriculum: From Reggio to Maestro with Melanie Moore from Cornerstones Education.
Melanie (B.Ed Hons, NPQH) is the founder and Curriculum Director of Cornerstones Education. A former primary teacher, deputy headteacher, curriculum adviser and creative strategy adviser, Mel has almost thirty years of experience in primary education.
Mel has written 10 commercial curriculum schemes, which Cornerstones says are used by hundreds of thousands of children worldwide. She has a passion for early years education, and primary curriculum design, with a particular interest in the concept of powerful knowledge and cultural capital.
This workshop presents a decade-long personal journey of discovery into the world of cultural capital, which begins in the pre-schools of northern Italy.
Mel will share her experience and observations of the unique educational philosophy of Reggio Children and examine its approach to cultural capital and the acquisition of powerful knowledge through real-life and local experience.
Mel will then provide a synopsis of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital and explain its place in the education inspection framework, then new.
Arriving at the workshop's final destination, Mel will provide practical strategies for ways to become the Maestro of your own culturally rich curriculum.
They discuss:
- What is cultural capital?
- How does it help our children become successful citizens?
- How can we offer a curriculum rich in cultural capital?
