The curriculum for the compulsory school is normally seen as a suitable steering and control instrument for handling the national responsibility for the content of education and also as a means to reduction of content complexity. Within the latest years the national curricula in Denmark (2009) and Norway (2006) have moved from more or less content driven curricula to standard driven curricula with standards expressed in competence terms. In other words the two countries have gone from an input oriented curriculum emphasizing what students learn, experience or discover to an output oriented curriculum emphasizing what students know, are able or can state. The attention has changed from content to students, from what the teacher teach to what the students learn. The study compares similarities and differences in the construction of the curricula (ability levels, competence areas, competence levels, diversification levels etc.), and how they are applied to the comprehensive school systems of the two countries. Methodologically the study will apply a difference theoretical approach (Spencer-Brown, Luhmann) to its comparisons.