Naomi Parkhill is Deputy Headteacher for Pastoral Care at The Mulberry House School, which recently attained the NACE Challenge Award for the third time. In this blog post, she shares some of the ways in which the school ensures challenge is embedded throughout all aspects of the school’s provision, for all learners.

At The Mulberry House School we are firm believers that challenge is not something that should be saved solely for the most able pupils, but should be readily available for all. With our school ethos being “We reach high to be the people we want to be, respect ourselves and others and enjoy each new challenge”, it is of utmost importance to us that challenge permeates the very centre of who we are as a school. We have a broad curriculum and value each subject equally. All of our children are encouraged to find their own strength and adopt a growth mindset across both curricular and extracurricular activities. 

Here are our top five tips for putting challenge at the heart of your school.

1. Know what excellence looks like

To challenge pupils to produce the very best work they are capable of, the teacher needs to ensure that they have got a firm understanding of what this looks like, both for the subject/area they are delivering and for the age of the children. This needs to incorporate both knowledge and skills. We have spent a lot of time as a school collaboratively deciding on the standards that we are aiming for; it is important that all staff agree on this in order to provide consistent challenge for all pupils.

2. Share this vision explicitly with learners

Once a decision has been made about what excellence looks like, it is important that we share this with our pupils. It is important to note that this is not limited to sharing examples of excellent work; the children need to know what it is that makes that piece of work excellent. This can be achieved through effective modelling, in which the teacher explains the thought process of an ‘expert’ in the subject as they work, helping to raise the standards of work for all. Another way to empower the children to strive for excellence is through carefully constructed success criteria, which act as a set of instructions to achieve the learning objective, again supporting challenge for all.

3. Empower learners to embrace new challenges

As a growth mindset school we wholeheartedly believe that anyone can improve if they try. A central part of our Mulberry House Way is “Try your best to be your best”. Through instilling this learning attitude in our children from a young age, they are prepared to accept challenges and give everything their maximum effort. Scaffolding plays a key role in supporting our children to achieve excellence. This allows us to provide each child or class with what they need to ensure that they produce the highest quality of work that they can. Allow the children to practise getting things right, then over time remove this support; this will lead to them creating a high standard of work independently.

4. Provide challenging extension and enrichment opportunities

Our recent case study exploring “Enrichment vs Extension” as a means of providing challenge for all – submitted as part of our recent NACE Challenge Award reaccreditation – has been successful in supporting the “challenge for all” aims of the NACE Challenge Development Programme. The outcomes of this case study have enriched the quality-first teaching that we endeavour to deliver. This has, in turn, impacted favourably on our children’s outcomes. We have spent time researching the difference between extension and enrichment opportunities and gaining an understanding of the value of each. We plan and deliver lessons that are centred on enrichment opportunities, with extension activities supporting individual learners to either close gaps or take the next step in their learning.

5. Encourage children to share their opinions

Central to the development of each child across the curriculum is their confidence to share their opinions and thought processes. From an early age we believe it is important to enable our children to explain how they have reached an answer and so the focus is on this rather than simply just providing the “correct” answer. In essence, we have started to embed metacognition, thinking about one’s thinking, in our Key Stage 1 learning. The impact that this has had on both children’s attitudes towards learning and academic outcomes has been significant. We look forward to rolling this out through our EYFS classes and seeing the impact this has.

How does your school provide challenge for all? Contact us to share your experience.