Education Library - Program of Studies
The Program of Studies is an annual publication of the Newfoundland and Labrador's Department of Education.
It's purpose is to list the curriculum textbooks and other resources authorized for Kindergarten to Grade 12
in the specified school year. The Department maintains the current year's document online and, in September
2008, gave permission for the Curriculum Materials Centre to digitize the earlier documents and make them
available publically through the Digital Archives Initiative.
In order to provide a complete collection of the Program of Studies for this project, other libraries and
collections were consulted. Thanks to the following for assistance in locating the original documents and
for permission to scan them: the Centre for Newfoundland Studies of Memorial Libraries; the Newfoundland
Room of the NL Public Libraries; the provincial Legislative Library; and both the Program Development
Division and, in particular, the High School Certification section of the NL Dept. of Education.
Scope
The Council of Higher Education was formed in 1893 and shortly thereafter began publishing a listing of
textbooks recommended to prepare students for examinations. The earliest such list located was for the
1898/1899 school year which was published in the Calendar of the Council of Higher Education. For many
years it was published as a "Syllabus", in some years it was called "Textbooks and Curriculum Bulletins"
and it finally became known as the Program(me) of Studies. All school years from 1898/99 to the present
are covered in this collection, including the years there were only additions and changes listed from a
previous syllabus.
Because the focus of the Council of Higher Education was for the graduating years, information about the
curriculum in the lower grades was often not included. The Curriculum Supplements A & B (1937, 1939 & 1941)
provide this information for those years and have been included in this collection. Not included in this collection
are a series of Handbooks or curriculum guides (published circa 1937 and reprinted several times) that give
comprehensive information about all the subjects and grades taught in the curriculum. It wasn't until the 1950/51
Syllabus - the first syllabus published after the new provincial Dept. of Education took over from the Council of
Higher Education - that the textbooks for all grades (1-XI) were listed. In 2013 the Department of Education began
publishing the Program of Studies exclusively online with embedded hypertext links to lists of authorized resources
organized by subject. This content is preserved digitally with two separate annual documents (program descriptors
in Part 1 and resource lists in Part 2).