During the ten years from 2008 to 2018, Shanghai High School’s curricula construction has shifted from ‘anticipation framework’ to ‘systematic implementation’, and not only has it expanded a number of areas of specialized curricula for students to choose from, but has also deepened the school curricula system development on the surface. Through substantial cooperation with universities, research institutes and even enterprises, the training of research-oriented teachers and the continuous upgrades of laboratory equipment have enabled the school curricula to adopt an integrated form of systematic implementation, and the academic connotation of the curricula has been continuously improved.

Systematization of the curriculum. The curriculum system of moral education for gifted students promotes the unity of students’ cognition, experience, practice and reflection. The school creates a series of compulsory courses on moral education for gifted students, focusing on the leadership of students’ core socialist values and forming a series of seven teaching materials for the featured courses of moral education for gifted students: System Design, CPS, LO, Double I, 48-hour Survival Training, and Field Trip. The elective courses promote students' flexible learning choices through the arrangement of large, medium, small and micro courses, with 150 to 200 courses available for students to take in each semester.

Openness of the curriculum. SHS has substantially cooperated with 17 university research institutes in terms of curriculum development, subject research guidance, laboratory construction and project leadership. More than 200 experts have been hired to come to our campus every semester to guide curriculum construction and give lectures, promoting the early cultivation of top creative talents in various fields such as science and technology, humanities and so on, and forming a varied mentorship system for curriculum learning.

Specialization of the curriculum. SHS offers specialized curricula that are academically oriented and instruct students to dig deeper at one or more points. The curricula focus on students' life interests, skills and passions, or on leading students to identify their own aspirations and to make initial choices of professional development orientations, which are based on their first experiences and attempts to match their aspirations, and thus to develop a sense of feeling, understanding and potential in a domain.