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I was looking through the Rival Academies book and surprised a bit that it had fewer Wizard Schools than I had thought, sporting some options for Witches and Magus, etc. above and beyond Wizard Schools.
However, looking over the Schools and Curriculum spells which they did have, it occurred to me that schools should often have uncommon spells, that are only 'common' to members of their school. Of course any spell common to any wizard, whom has to study the spell from his spellbook would of course become relatively easily taken, by someone getting a hold of some individual's spellbook. So it might make them notably less exclusive than one might otherwise think.
However, what if due to the nature of the core curriculum some spells are covered so much that a wizard does not need their spellbook to study any spells that they know spells from their schools major curriculum. This would help 'secret' spells to remain secret, as written copies might only exist in school libraries and in rare cases potentially on scrolls, made by a member who felt they needed extra castings.
It is a minor extra boost to what you get with your curriculum. (spells you could prepare, even if you lose your spellbook, for instance)
I also am contemplating potentially allowing any wizard to swap a prepared spell for another copy of the spell they have prepared in an appropriate School Slot as an option when Focusing. Basically notably weaker version of the ability that the Runelords have where they can swap any prepared spell for any appropriate curriculum or sin spell, not just their currently prepared one.
I do like the idea of making curriculum spells more of a benefit than a limitation, though I'm not a huge fan of playing with rarity like this for slot spells. Although focus spells are uncommon to signify that they're inaccessible without the right feat or class feature, slot spells use rarity a bit differently, and the assumption is that any caster of a certain tradition can access uncommon or rare slot spells at the GM's discretion or based on the circumstances of an AP. In this respect, school spells I think already satisfy the criterion of secret spells that are only taught in certain schools.
On the flipside, I think the idea of every Wizard having a weaker version of Spell Substitution by default that lets them replace prepared spells with curriculum spells is brilliant. That in my opinion would already start to make the Wizard a much more flexible class, and importantly would make their spell curriculum feel like an asset, rather than a restriction. I think there's room to buff the Wizard a lot more, particularly at early levels, but repreparing spells as a core feature definitely gets my vote in all cases.