Rachel Taylor, Headteacher, Brook Field Primary School 

As part of our ongoing commitment to ensuring high-quality teaching and learning, staff at Brook Field Primary School recently engaged in NACE’s on-demand training, focusing on the Creating Cognitively Challenging Classrooms course. A central element of this training for us was the “Planning to the Top” module, which focuses on developing classroom environments and learning opportunities that support deeper thinking and intellectual challenge for all pupils – not just the most able. 

Following this valuable training, time was provided for dissemination across the teaching team. Subject leaders then worked collaboratively to produce subject-specific guides aimed at supporting staff in planning and delivering lessons that consistently include high-quality, cognitively demanding tasks. These guides – referred to as “Planning to the Top Pro Formas” – are now in use across the school and have become a key tool in maintaining high expectations and academic challenge within every subject. 

To create these documents, subject leaders drew on a wide range of sources. These included:

• The revised Bloom’s Taxonomy question and activity templates, previously developed by staff. 
• Insights and strategies from prior professional development sessions within their subject areas. 
• Resources from NACE and other organisations, including identification criteria and provision guidance for more able learners. 

This thoughtful synthesis of resources ensures that the Planning to the Top Pro Formas are not only research-informed, but also practical, user-friendly, and tailored to the needs of our pupils. They provide structured support for teachers when designing tasks that require deeper levels of thinking – such as analysis, evaluation and creation – ensuring that lessons are not only accessible, but ambitious. 

Importantly, these documents are not static. As part of their ongoing subject leadership responsibilities, subject leaders regularly use the pro formas during monitoring activities, including lesson visits and planning scrutiny. This helps ensure that high-level challenge is embedded across the curriculum and that the use of the documents remains purposeful and relevant. Furthermore, as leaders continue to build their expertise, they are encouraged to adapt and enhance the pro formas with new ideas and best practices. This dynamic approach ensures the documents stay ‘live’ and reflective of our evolving understanding of effective pedagogy. 

As highlighted by Rosenthal and Jacobsen in their influential research: “When teachers have high expectations of their students’ abilities, they are likely to achieve higher.” This belief is at the heart of the “planning to the top” approach. By expecting all pupils to engage in complex, meaningful learning tasks, we are cultivating an environment where every child is challenged and supported to reach their full potential. 

The introduction and use of Planning to the Top Pro Formas marks an exciting step forward in our teaching practice. Through them, we are reinforcing a culture of high expectations, deep thinking, and continuous professional learning – ensuring that every lesson provides rich opportunities for all children to think hard and learn deeply. 

View the current versions here: art / English / geography / history / maths / modern languages / music / PE / science  

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• Will not inform their parents of activities that have a cost, regardless of whether the school might subsidise or fund the activity;
• Will feign disinterest in opportunities that they know are unaffordable to their families;
• Will not take up fully funded enrichment opportunities due to other associated costs such as travel to a funded summer school, or the costs of camping equipment and/or specific clothing required for field work or an outward-bound activity;
• Will not stay on after school for activities because they are hungry and lack the resources to purchase a snack.

Ten top tips to help eliminate economic exclusion:

1. Ensure that all staff have undertaken training to heighten their awareness of poverty and the financial pressures faced by many families in relation to the costs of the school day.
2. Track sign-ups and attendance by PP eligibility at enrichment activities. Take action where you see underrepresentation.
3. Contact parents directly to stress how valuable it would be for their child to attend and to explain the financial support that can be provided.
4. Set up payment plans and give maximum notice to allow families to spread the costs.
5. Book activity centres out of season when costs are lower.
6. Use public transport rather than private coaches or plan visits to sites that are within a walkable distance.
7. Ban visits to shops and food outlets to eradicate the need for spending money on trips.
8. Set up virtual gallery tours and film screenings of plays and arrange for visiting theatre companies, bands and artists to come to school rather than taking the students to concert halls, theatres and galleries. 
9. Build up a stock of loanable equipment (wellies, coats, tents, waterproof clothing, musical instruments, sporting equipment, craft materials etc.) 
10. Provide free snacks for learners staying for after-school clubs.

Three key questions to consider:

1. Do you track which learners opt for each course at KS4 and KS5, ask questions and act accordingly where you see underrepresentation of PP eligible learners? 
2. Do you prioritise PP eligible learners for 1:1 options and advice at KS3>4, KS4>5 and KS5>higher education, to ensure that they are aiming high, pursuing their passions and aware of all the financial support available (e.g. use of bursary funding, reassurance around logistics of university student loans)?
3. Do you determine, and strive to meet, the precise resource needs of each PP eligible learner?  

• Closing the attainment gap – part 1: diagnosing challenges and barriers
• Closing the attainment gap – part 3: developing a sense of belonging and status in economically disadvantaged learners

Schools are tasked by Ofsted to “boost cultural capital” and to “close the disadvantage gap”. In this blog post, Andy Griffith, co-author of The Working Classroom, makes some practical suggestions for schools to adopt.

1. Explore the language around “cultural capital” and “disadvantage”

As educators we know that language is very important, so before we try to boost or close something we should think deeply about terms that are commonly referred to. What are the origins of these terms? What assumptions lie behind them? Ofsted describes cultural capital as “the best that has been thought and said”, but who decides what constitutes the “best”? Notions of best are, by definition, subjective value choices. 

The phrase “best that has been thought and said”, originally coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, is worthy of study in itself (see below for reference). Bourdieu described embodied cultural capital as a person’s education (knowledge and intellectual skills) which provides advantage in achieving a higher social status. For Bourdieu the “game” is rigged. The game Bourdieu refers to is, of course, the game of life, of which education is a significant element. 

When it comes to the term “disadvantaged”, Lee Elliott Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter Professor, suggests that instead we refer to low-income families as “under-resourced”. Schools should be careful not to treat the working class as somehow inferior or as something that needs to be fixed.

Action: Ensure that staff fully understand the term “cultural capital”. Alongside this, explore “social capital” and “disadvantage”. This is best done through discussion and debate. Newspaper articles and even blogs like this one can act as a good stimulus.

2. Create a well-designed cultural curriculum

Does your school have a plan for taking students on a cultural journey? How many trips will your students go on before they leave your school? Could these experiences be incorporated into a passport of sorts?

The cultural experiences you offer will be determined by factors such as your school’s location and budget. A lot of cultural experiences can be delivered in-house in the form of external speakers, films and documentaries, or virtual reality. Others will require excursions. In either case, creating a Cultural Passport helps staff to plan experiences that complement and supplement previous experiences. 

Schools should strike a balance between celebrating each community’s history and going beyond the existing community to broaden students’ horizons. Again, language is important. Does your school’s cultural curriculum explore the differences between so-called “high” and “low” culture? 

No class is an island. Students of all social backgrounds should experience live theatre, visiting museums, going to art exhibitions, visiting the countryside and encountering people from cultures other than their own. Equally, every school’s cultural curriculum should celebrate working class culture. The working classes have a vibrant history of creating art, music, theatre, literature and so on, which needs to be reflected in the core curriculum. 

By looking through the lens of race and gender, most schools have a more diverse offering of writers compared with when I went to school. It is right that more Black voices and more female voices are represented in the school curriculum. This opens new insights for readers, as well as providing Black and female students with more role models. 

Similarly, there should be a strong emphasis on the work of working-class artists and autodidacts, no matter the social demographic of the school. Studying working-class writers such as Jimmy McGovern, Kayleigh Lewellyn, and musicians such as Terry Hall and even Dolly Parton can be inspiring. Similarly, learning about autodidacts such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo can teach students that where there is a strong desire to learn, people can find a way. 

Action: Ensure your school is “teaching backwards” from rich cultural experiences. Outline the experiences that will be stamped in their Cultural Passport before they leave your school.

3. Explore social capital barriers for students

One of the greatest things we can do as educators is to remove a barrier that is holding a student back. One barrier that is faced by many working-class students is lack of social capital – i.e. the limited range of occupations of their social acquaintances or network.

In 2016 I created the first of a number of Scholars Programmes in Kirkby, Merseyside. I’m proud that as well as making a positive impact on academic results at GCSE, it has raised aspirations. The programme is deliberately designed to build social capital. Over the duration of the programme (from Year 7 to 11), students have opportunities to meet and interview adults who are in careers that they aspire to. As well as work experience, the school organises Zoom interviews for students with people working in the industry that they are interested in joining. Not only do these interviews invigorate students, they create a contact that is there to be emailed for information and advice. Over time, the school has created a database of contacts who are able to offer work placements or are happy to take part in either face-to-face or virtual interviews with students. These people are friends and family members of the staff, and even friends of friends.

It is much, much harder for working class students to enter elite professions such as medicine, law and the media. The arts and the creative industries are also harder to break into. Contacts who are able to help a student to build specific industry knowledge and experience can give them a better chance of future success.

Action: Creatively utilise a database of school contacts to provide information and advice for students. Match students with professionals who can offer career advice and insights.

Reference: P. Bourdieu, Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey (eds), Power and Ideology in Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 487–51.

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The ideas and strategies in this article are contained within The Working Classroom by Matt Bromley and Andy Griffith (Crown House Publishing). More information about the book and training around its contents can be found here.

NACE members can benefit from a 20% discount on all purchases from the Crown House Publishing website. View our member offers page for details.

Plus... The NACE Conference 2025 will draw on the latest research (including our own current research programme) and case studies to explore how schools can remove barriers to learning and create opportunities for all young people to flourish. Read more and book your place.

1. Papasavitch (our very own made-up language)

2. The RS SMSJ Essay Writing Competition (open to all schools)

3. Collaboration and exploration – across and beyond the school

Dr Matthew Williams, Access Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, shares his belief in the importance of “confident creativity” as the key to developing sustained effort and a lasting love of learning.

I am a fellow and tutor in politics at Jesus College, Oxford, and I’d like to share some thoughts on how students can be energised to “work harder”. Specifically how do we encourage sustained effort, leading to improved attainment? What follows are reflections on a decade of teaching and schools outreach work at Oxford and Reading Universities. There is a mixture of theory here, but readers should be warned there will also be big dollops of unscientifically personal recall.

As an undergraduate student of politics at the University of Bristol, the most significant learning experience came during seminars on the British Labour Party. At first, I was fairly indifferent on the subject, but the seminars entailed a mixture of traditional essay-based research and more flashy simulation-based learning. On the latter, we had a Cabinet meeting in our seminar with each of us playing real characters. I was Jim Callaghan, and I had to prepare Cabinet papers, work out strategy and tactics in order to win a fight with, in particular, Tony Benn!

The experience brought everything to life. The theoretical and practical came together, and I have to this day never forgotten the specifics of that fight in late 1976. On reflection, the primary effect of the simulation was the transformation of the subject matter from work into study. Studying is not work in the sense of being performed for someone or something else’s benefit. Instead, studying is intrinsically pleasurable. Whilst many students are motivated by long-term payoff (career prospects, reputation, power etc) many, like me, see more immediate feedback. This particular teaching style transformed the 9am walk to lectures from a reluctant trudge to an enthusiastic commute. It was revelatory.

Demystifying the means of achieving distinction

Ever since those seminars I have aspired in my personal and professional life to transform work into study. The key ingredient used by the seminar tutor was positive motivation. He made clear his interest was in us and our ideas, rather than our performance in the exam and the reputation of the university. As such, he did not want us to regurgitate the literature, rather he wanted us to know the literature so we could analyse it critically whilst presenting our own original contributions.

This was liberating. All of sudden the most complex elements of social democratic ideology and post-industrial economics were not prohibitively intimidating; they were required reading for anyone wishing to have their voice heard. In this process, we had to acknowledge we could contribute to a debate despite our relative academic inexperience. The tutor was clear: good ideas are not the monopoly of tenured professors. If we wanted to, we were perfectly capable of contributing original theoretical insights and empirical discoveries. To achieve the distinction of a first class degree our work had to be creative and, crucially, the tutor made clear we were all capable of distinction if we wanted it.

This teaching style resonated with me because it demystified the means of achieving distinction. Previously, I had assumed distinction was a matter of talent, intelligence and luck – none of which I felt much graced with. Subsequently, I realised distinction meant creativity, and creativity needed energy and self-confidence.

Understanding the importance of “confident creativity”

“Confident creativity” is not my first teaching philosophy. For a job application in 2012 I proposed a similar philosophy focused on positive motivation and confident application of skills. Whilst this is seemingly the same philosophy, the older version was predicated on teaching as the transmission of knowledge, where now I see teaching more as developing and nurturing key skills. The transmission model prioritised interesting learning materials as the fundamental variable; whilst I still consider the materials to be important, they are secondary to the students’ nurtured development of complex skills. When students internalise the skills of processing complex information, they will find interest in practically all relevant materials, without the need for unrepresentatively “sexy” content. Even a 1970s Cabinet meeting can become enthralling!

The key change in my teaching philosophy has been the realisation that motivating students should encourage a sense of independent intellectual development. This change in emphasis can be represented as a synthesis of two learning outcome hierarchies, proposed by Bloom et al (left pyramid) and Anderson & Krathwohl et al (right pyramid).

I propose a synthesis of these taxonomies, fleshed out with qualifying adjectives:

Including qualifying adjectives in Anderson & Krathwohl et al’s hierarchy allows us to assess the learning objectives in greater detail, with clearer observable implications. Adding an extra level of nuance to the concepts enriches their meaning, without losing the parsimony and clarity which are such key strengths of the original taxonomy. The addition of adjectives could be criticised as creating needless tautologies – if, for instance, we assume confidence is a necessary condition of creativity. However, creativity can be achieved without confidence if it is accidental and the student is unaware of the merits of their creativity. We need to aim for confident creativity because it is significantly more sustainable and transferable for a student to create in confidence than to be creative by accident or with heavy-handed guidance.

Transferring this approach to different contexts

Critical reflexivity is a very personal journey, and the results of my personal reflections may not be transferable. Even the phrase “teaching philosophy” connotes a sense of philosophy as retroactive rationalisation of one’s own perspective, as opposed to the analytic use of the term as a clear, open and rigorous system of thought. As Nancy Chism states, somewhat ironically, “One of the hallmarks of a philosophy of teaching statement is its individuality.” Whilst a teaching philosophy is developed through self-reflection, it requires self-awareness before it can be applied to others. Notably, teachers are somewhat unusual in their relationship with knowledge. They relish the acquisition of knowledge as an intrinsic good, where motivation to learn is rarely absent and the desire to contribute is second nature.

But what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. For many students school and college is first and foremost about acquiring qualifications, and therefore simply an instrument for career advancement. As such, not all students want to achieve distinction, nor see the value in risking creative contributions when a less resistant path exists. For such students there is a risk that emphasis on creativity will alienate them from the subject and the teacher. Furthermore, the development of my teaching philosophy has primarily taken place at an elite university, where boundary-pushing and intellectual confidence is far less risk-laden than in other contexts. The unflinchingly liberal environment at Oxford ascribes considerable value to intellectual creativity, perhaps at the expense of consolidation. Yet there is little utility in a teaching philosophy that is contingent on where and for whom it applies.

Nevertheless, these concerns are surmountable. Yes, academics perhaps have a gilded view of knowledge, but only because they have internalised the skills of contributing knowledge to the point where it has become (for the most part) a pleasure. It is incumbent on academics to encourage students towards a similar relationship with the world. Whilst not all students will want or feel able to contribute genuine insights, “confident creativity” is the apex of the pyramid and there are other levels of learning available to differentiate between learners. The ambition should be to encourage confident creativity, but “critical evaluation” or “balanced analysis” will be satisfactory outcomes for many students. Learners should not be forced to fit a teaching style that alienates them and a degree of differentiation between students will be required with the proviso that “confident creativity” is unambiguously the preferred goal and should be encouraged as far as possible.

Ultimately, the point of education is to equip individuals with the skills to speak for themselves. This is best achieved when we mix up teaching styles, and jolt work into study.

References

• Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (eds) (2001) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc).
• Bloom, B.S., Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (eds) (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals – Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. (London, WI: Longmans, Green & Co Ltd).
• Chism, N. V. N. (1998) “Developing a Philosophy of Teaching Statement.” in Essays on Teaching Excellence 9(3) (Athens GA: Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education).
• Pratt, D.D., & Collins, J.B. (2000) ‘The teaching perspectives inventory: Developing and testing an instrument to assess teaching perspectives’ Proceeding of the 41st Adult Education Research Conference.

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About the author

Dr Matthew Williams is Access Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford, where he teaches and conducts research in the field of political studies. Known as “the Welsh College”, Jesus College has a long history of working with schools in Wales and has recently taken on responsibility for delivering the university’s outreach and access programmes across all regions of Wales. Read more.

Live webinar: “Developing sustained effort in able learners”

On 2 July Dr Williams is leading a free webinar for NACE members in Wales, exploring approaches to developing confident creativity and motivating learners to be ambitious for themselves. This is part of our current series supporting curriculum development in Wales. Find out more and book your place.