January 2001 could be something of a watershed for the role of the internet in education. The end of the month will see the launch of National Curriculum Online, a much more sophisticated and powerful version of the print version currently available on the web, already one of the UK's most popular education-related websites.

Using a system of organising data called metatagging, National Curriculum Online aims to make life a lot easier for teachers. This involves using key words, otherwise known as metadata, to describe the content of the national curriculum on the site and on partner sites. Simply clicking on any statement in the curriculum programmes of study will take you to appropriate internet-based resources, often specific pages, not just whole websites.

"The national curriculum provides a great mechanism for tailoring a search," explains Roger Davies, head of publishing at the QCA, which has validated the new system. "Traditionally if you want to, say, find something suitable on the Romans, you would go into Yahoo! or another search engine and type in 'Romans' and up would come 10,000 sites.

"The national curriculum breaks down the curriculum into subjects and key stages, and into programmes of study and teaching requirements; metatagging allows us to underpin each of those with links to resources that support those."

Each of those internet resources will be carefully sifted by key stage and theme. These might be worksheets or other information directed at pupils, teaching guidance or background information about the skills, knowledge and understanding referred to in the requirement. They will include government and commercial resources, museums and galleries, and sites created by other teachers.

"The national curriculum will act as a filter that saves a lot of time in terms of research and evaluation," says Davies. "We want to get away from the sort of hot link that takes you to the home page, where you then have to find your way down to the information you actually want. We will reduce the number of clicks it takes to get you there."

Initially there will be at least 10 resources per key stage of each subject - around 440 for the whole curriculum - but in time the site will grow to include resources that touch on every statement, even including examples of pupils' work. And each external resource will be peer-reviewed by other teachers, making sure that the best rise to the top. "One purpose of the site is to become a place where teachers' knowledge is stored and shared," says Jonathan Hollow, senior education consultant at C21, the lead consultancy for the restructuring and design of National Curriculum Online. "Because any teacher can submit their own recommendations on useful websites, it will become a kind of archive of their knowledge and expertise."

National Curriculum Online will also form links with other educational content providers, known as "trusted partners". Publishers of any kind producing a lot of curriculum-related content will be invited to use the new metadata standard to index their own content. This will mean that every relevant page on their site will be linked automatically with all the applicable curriculum requirements, while teachers will be able to see at a glance what relevance any particular resource might have to the national curriculum standards.

Current trusted partners include learn.co.uk, the Guardian's education resources website, along with the BBC, Science Museum and the Tidy Britain group's Ecoschools project. "But there could be hundreds," says Hollow. "Basically we've written what we hope will become a British standard. Anyone can now adopt it and link their material to the national curriculum."

And good internet resources are not all that National Curriculum Online will offer. Within a few months of the launch it will link into the schemes of work, knitting together all the key government guidance on the curriculum. You will also be able to search the national curriculum text by keyword and collate the results, allowing you, for instance, to search for all the key skills for communication at key stage one.

You could also do similar searches to find all the ways to teach any area that cuts across the curriculum, such as thinking skills, citizenship and PSHE, or ICT.

It's a mammoth undertaking, but C21 is bullish about its reception. "We do see it as becoming the definitive access point for teachers to access resources for the curriculum," says Hollow. "Basically we think it will have a huge impact on teachers' lives."

• National Curriculum Online will be launched on January 22. See www.nc.uk.net for details. It will also be previewed at Bett.