Thomas Bennett, Health Sciences University, reflects on why curriculum transformation succeeds or fails after approval, when delivery becomes the real challenge.
The riskiest moment in curriculum transformation is often the moment everyone relaxes.
That sounds counterintuitive. Approval is the point at which a university has completed much of the visible work. Consultation has taken place. Programme teams have contributed. Quality colleagues have tested the proposal. Academic governance has agreed the direction.
The institution can reasonably feel that change is underway. Yet approval may also be the point at which a different kind of work begins.
Having worked across curriculum review, validation, quality assurance and educational partnerships, I have often seen institutions put significant energy into agreeing change, only to find that delivering it is the harder part. The lesson for me is simple: approval matters, but it does not make transformation happen on its own.
Approval changes – The Framework
The approval process is important: Academic governance protects standards. Validation tests coherence. Curriculum review creates space for enhancement. A university that does not take approval seriously is unlikely to implement curriculum change well.
But approval is not transformation. Approval changes the framework. Transformation changes what happens in practice. The danger is that approval can create assurance that a curriculum has changed before the institution has tested whether it is ready to deliver that change.
That distinction matters because curriculum reform is now expected to do a great deal. Curriculum reviews are increasingly expected to solve several challenges at once, from student success and employability to flexibility, belonging and the implications of generative AI.
Many of these ambitions depend on things that sit beyond the curriculum framework itself.
The delivery challenge
A curriculum framework might encourage fewer, better assessments.But do assessment regulations support that ambition? Do programme teams have time to redesign assessment properly? Are module templates, validation requirements and external examiner expectations aligned?
A framework might promise a more coherent student journey.
But can timetabling support it? Can the student records system accommodate it? Can students move through the curriculum in the way the design assumes?
A framework might emphasise employability, belonging or AI confidence.
But is there enough educational development support? Is workload recognised? Do academic teams feel ownership of the change?
These questions often become more significant after approval than before it.
During one curriculum review process I supported, programme teams redesigned assessment to reduce volume and improve authenticity. The new framework was approved, but implementation proved more difficult. Existing assessment regulations, module documentation and workload assumptions had not all changed at the same pace. The curriculum had evolved, but some of the conditions needed to deliver it were still catching up.
The experience reinforced how important it is to consider implementation readiness alongside curriculum design from the outset.
What students actually experience
Students do not experience the approval paper. They experience the timetable, assessment pattern, feedback cycle, digital environment, advising model and overall coherence of their course.
If those things remain largely unchanged, then the curriculum may not have transformed in the way the institution intended. This is why curriculum reform cannot be viewed only as an academic design exercise. It depends on academic teams, certainly, but also on professional services, digital infrastructure, regulations, planning assumptions, workload models and institutional culture.
Where those elements are aligned, institutions are more likely to see curriculum intentions reflected in the student experience. When they are not, implementation becomes uneven.
Some programmes innovate. Some comply. Some adapt existing practice. Others wait for clearer direction. The result can be a curriculum framework that is consistent on paper, but experienced differently by students across programmes.If no one owns the conditions after approval, implementation depends too heavily on goodwill and local interpretation.
Three questions after approval
One practical lesson is that institutions should ask three questions immediately after curriculum approval.
What else now needs to change?
Which regulations, systems, templates, timelines or processes need to be updated to support the new curriculum?
Who owns delivery?
How will academic teams, professional services and institutional leaders share responsibility for implementation?
How will we know it worked?
What evidence will show whether students are experiencing something different?
These questions are not implementation footnotes. They are a practical way of testing whether the conditions for transformation are in place.
They can be used in programme planning meetings, validation follow-up, curriculum implementation groups or annual review. The aim is not to create another layer of bureaucracy. It is to make visible the things that need to change if the approved curriculum is to become the lived curriculum.
Looking beyond approval
Approval can authorise change. It can establish principles. It can create a mandate. What it cannot do on its own is create capacity, capability, ownership, system readiness or cultural adoption. Those are the conditions that turn approved change into lived change.
In my experience, the institutions that implement curriculum change most successfully are not necessarily those with the most ambitious frameworks. They are the ones that recognise transformation as an organisational challenge rather than an approval exercise.
If curriculum transformation is a priority in your institution, where does attention go after approval? What would change if the next curriculum approval process ended not with “approved”, but with a shared plan for what now needs to be in place?
Thomas Bennett is a higher education leader with experience across learning and teaching, curriculum transformation, academic quality, educational partnerships and institutional change. His work focuses on how universities align governance, accountability and implementation to improve educational outcomes and create sustainable institutional transformation.
Suggested references/links
Advance HE: Reimagining Curriculum Across a Whole InstitutionQAA: UK Quality Code for Higher Education 2024Jisc: Trends in assessment in higher educationOffice for Students: Condition B3: Student outcomes.
