This article sets out the construction of curriculum designs for basic primary education in Colombian public institutions, which makes it possible to analyse the relationships and tensions between educational quality, equity, curriculum design and afro-descendant culture, as factors that encourage or inhibit the pedagogical promotion of quality and equity, for the benefit of students from vulnerable strata in the Afro-descendant municipalities of the Department of the Cauca Valley, Colombia. Research is approached from an ethnographic and holistic approach, using a mixed quanti qualitative mode, where quantitative data are taken to allow the comparison of curricula, related to the results of the learning in standardised tests, and a case study is applied to 19 educational institutions. The result is a contribution to the reflection on theories and norms, compared with the reality of vulnerable and minority populations with many limitations, and on the suitability of curriculum designs to make education of quality a lever for promoting socio-economic, civic and cultural equity.