The recently published Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) Final Report confirms that ambition must lie at the heart of a new system of education. It sets out a vision whereby every pupil should have access to “a rich, aspirational and challenging offer” – that is, a curriculum designed not just for many, but for all. 

The review emphasises that ambition for every learner means more than raising the bar – it means ensuring no pupil is left behind, and that ambition is realised through curriculum design, teaching, and assessment working in harmony. 

As we respond to this agenda in our schools, the question becomes: how do we keep our curriculum ambitious for every learner, especially as change looms? In this piece, we outline six practical levers to help school leaders, middle leaders and teachers embed ambition for all – drawing on the research and practice we explored in How Do They Do It?.

1. Ambition begins with clarity of purpose

Every ambitious curriculum starts with this question: what do we want every pupil to know, understand, and be able to do? In our book, we make the point that ambition is not simply a display on a wall but is visible in the quality of pupils’ work.

The CAR underlines that schools need to articulate an entitlement: the national curriculum must be for all children and young people, and should be inclusive in design.

Without clarity of purpose, ambition becomes a slogan rather than a coherent practice.

To act on this:

• Review your curriculum intent statements: do they specify outcomes for all learners – including those with disrupted learning, special educational needs or disadvantage?
• When planning units, ask: can teachers articulate the ambitious end-point for each learner group?
• Use professional development to bring teachers together to examine examples of strong pupil work and discuss: was this ambitious? Why? How might we raise it further?

2. Ambition demands intelligent sequencing

Ambitious work isn’t about giving the hardest material first, nor about revisiting the same material without progression. It’s about building a staircase, not erecting a wall. In our research, we saw two common mistakes: one, ambition set too low (re-visiting rather than deepening); two, ambition set too high (introducing content before pupils are ready).

The CAR emphasises coherence and progression. It signals that linking prior learning, increasing complexity and ensuring curriculum continuity across key stages are vital. 

Actions to support this:

• Audit schemes of work: check that each unit connects to prior learning and shows how pupils will progress to something more challenging.
• Plan for learners who may need scaffolded or bridge units so they are ready for ambitious work.
• Create opportunities to revisit, consolidate and then apply knowledge in increasingly complex contexts.
  

3. Ambition is outward-looking

If ambition is entirely internalised, it can become complacent. The most ambitious schools maintain a habit of looking outwards: to exemplar practice, to strong pupil work elsewhere, to what disciplines expect beyond school.

The CAR highlights that the national curriculum should reflect the diversities of our society and prepare young people for work and life. That requires schools to benchmark against high expectations everywhere. 

How to embed this:

• Ask teachers to bring in examples of strong curriculum design, assessment tasks and pupil work from other schools/contexts.
• Use subject networks, external visits or trust collaboration to compare what ambitious work looks like in your phase/subject.
• Regularly ask: what would this look like if we were at our best? What would pupils be producing?
  

4. Ambition must be inclusive by design

Ambition for some pupils is not ambition at all. The CAR is explicit that the curriculum and assessment system must provide for all children and young people, including those who face barriers. 

This is why we argue that ambition must be non-negotiable but flexible: entitlement to high-quality knowledge and rich tasks, with scaffolding and support built in for access.

Practical steps:

• At curriculum planning stage ask: how will this ambitious aim be accessible to all learners without lowering the bar?
• For pupils with SEND or interrupted learning, build in bridge tasks, retrieval opportunities and scaffolds.
• Celebrate ambitious outcomes from all learner groups – shift the narrative so ambition is seen as universal, not exclusive.
  

5. Ambition shows up in assessment and the final product

Ambition isn’t fulfilled when a lesson ends or when pupils complete worksheets. It is fulfilled when pupils produce something significant: an extended essay, a fieldwork project, a creative performance, a reasoned debate. In our work we observed too many schools focus on content coverage and then skip the phase where pupils use that knowledge to do something ambitious.

The CAR emphasises that assessment systems should capture the breadth of the curriculum and reflect rich outcomes – not narrow measures only.

Actions for this:

• Construct assessment tasks which require pupils to apply and reason, not merely recall.
• Provide time for pupils to revisit and refine work so ambition is realised.
• Use pupils’ outcomes as diagnostic data: did the ambitious task yield the expected quality? What adjustments to curriculum or pedagogy are needed?
  

6. Ambition is sustained through reflection and iteration

Curriculum design and teaching are not one-off achievements. The CAR recognises that the system must evolve, and that ambition requires ongoing review: “Why are we doing this? Are we achieving what we set out to? How do we know?” are questions we emphasise in How Do They Do It?

How to make this a habit:

• At the end of each unit, hold a short review: did pupils’ work reach our ambitious end-point? What blockers emerged? What support was most effective?
• Maintain a departmental ambition tracker: track the quality of pupil outcomes across learner groups, identify where ambition may be slipping, and intervene.
• Support teacher professional learning around ambition: hold collaborative workshops, peer-review sessions or book group discussions on what ambitious means in practice.
  

Final thoughts

The Curriculum and Assessment Review has given us a timely prompt: ambition is more than a goal. It is a design factor, built into curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and school culture. For ambition to become reality, it must be clear, sequenced, outward-looking, inclusive, visible in assessment, and sustained through review.

In our busy schools, it can be tempting to focus on operational change – new content lists, new assessment formats – but without anchoring these in an ambition-for-all mindset we risk reforming the system without transforming it.

So let us ask: what does ambitious mean in our context? What will pupils be producing when we succeed? How will we know that all learners, including those facing the steepest barriers, have done ambitious work and are ready for what comes next?

If we keep that focus at the centre of our curriculum redesign, we will ensure that ambition for all is not just rhetoric but daily reality.

Mark Enser and Zoe Enser were teachers and school leaders, ex-HMIs in Ofsted’s Curriculum Unit, and are the authors of How Do They Do It? What can we learn from amazing schools, leaders and teachers? (Crown House, 2025).

For discounts on this and other Crown House publications, view all current NACE member offers (login required).

Ten top tips to build learners’ sense of belonging and status

1. Welcome them to the class, ensuring that you make eye contact, address them by name and give them a smile – establishing your positive relationship and helping them feel noticed, valued and safe in the learning environment.
2. Go out of your way to find opportunities to give them responsibilities or assign a role to them, making it clear to them the skills and/or knowledge they possess that make(s) them perfect for the job. 
3. Reserve a place for them at clubs and ensure they are well inducted into enrichment opportunities.
4. Arrange groupings for activities to ensure they have supportive peers to work with.
5. Invite them to contribute to discussions, to read and to give their opinions. Don’t allow confident learners to dominate the discussion (learners with high status talk more!) and don’t ask for volunteers to read (students with low status are unlikely to volunteer). 
6. Show respect for their opinions and defer to them for advice. e.g. “So, I’m wondering what might be the best way to go about this. Martha, what do you think?” “That’s a good point, Nitin. I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you!”
7. Make a point of telling them you think they should put themselves forward for opportunities (e.g. to go to a football trial, audition for the show, apply to be a prefect) and provide support (e.g. with writing an application or practising a speech).
8. Connect them with a champion or mentor (adult or older peer) from a similar background who has achieved success to build their self-belief.   
9. Secure high-status work experience placements or internships for them.
10. Invite inspiring role models with similar lived experience into school or build the stories of such role models into schemes of learning and assemblies.  

• Closing the attainment gap – part 1: diagnosing challenges and barriers
• Closing the attainment gap – part 2: eliminating economic exclusion

Do academically strong pupils at your school who are on the Pupil Premium register progress as quickly and attain as highly as academically strong pupils who are not? 

Do these students sometimes grasp new concepts quickly and securely in the classroom and show flair and promise in lessons, only to perform less well in exams than their more advantaged peers?

If so, what can be done to close the attainment gap?

In this series of three blog posts, Rachel Macfarlane, Lead Adviser for Underserved Learners at HFL Education, explores the reasons for the attainment gap and offers practical strategies for supporting economically disadvantaged learners who have the potential to access high grades and assessment outcomes to excel in tests and exams. 

This first post examines the challenges and barriers often faced by economically disadvantage learners and offers advice about precise diagnosis and smart identification of needs. Part 2 explores strategies for eliminating economic exclusion, while Part 3 looks at ways to build a sense of belonging and status for these learners to enhance their performance.

The problem with exams

The first point to make is that high stakes terminal tests and exams tend not to favour learners from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. These learners often lack the abundance of social and cultural capital that their more advantaged peers have amassed. This can result in a failure to recognise and connect with the cultural references frequently found in SATs and exam questions. 

Students on the Pupil Premium (PP) register have a lower average attendance rate than those from more affluent backgrounds. Those living in multiple occupancy and/or crowded housing are more exposed to germs and viruses, and families in rented or local authority housing move accommodation more frequently, resulting in lost learning days. With packed, content-heavy exam syllabuses, missed lessons lead to less developed schema, less secure knowledge and less honed skills. 

The families of economically disadvantaged learners are less likely to have the financial means to provide the personal tutoring, cramming and exam practice that their more advantaged peers benefit from. And if they have reduced levels of self-belief and confidence, as many students from underserved groups do, they are more likely to crumble under exam pressure and perform poorly in timed conditions.

But given the fact that terminal tests, in the form of SATs, GCSEs and A-levels, seem here to stay as the main means of assessing learners, what can school teachers and leaders do to ensure that economically disadvantaged learners who have the potential to access high grades and assessment outcomes excel academically?

Precise diagnosis of challenges and barriers

The first step is to get to the root of the problem. Schools which have closed the attainment gap tend to be skilled at diagnosing the precise challenge or barrier standing in the way of each underserved learner. Rather than treating all PP eligible learners as a homogeneous group, they are determined to understand the lived experience of each. 

So, for example, rather than talking in general or vague terms about pupils on the PP register doing less well because their attendance rate is lower, they drill down to identify the precise reason for the absences of each learner whose attendance is below par. For one it might be that they are working at a paid job in the evenings and too tired to get up in time for school, for a second it might be that they don’t come to school on days when their one set of uniform is dirty or worn, for a third that they sometimes cannot afford the transport costs to get to school and for a fourth that they are being marginalised or bullied and therefore avoiding school. 

Effective ways to diagnose challenges and barriers faced by economically disadvantaged learners include:

• Home visits, or meetings on site, to get to know parents/carers and to better understand any challenges they face;
• Employing a parent liaison officer to build up relationships based on trust and mutual respect with parents;
• Allocating a staff champion to each underserved learner to talk with and listen to them in order to better understand their lived experience;
• Administering a survey with well-chosen questions to elicit barriers faced;
• Completion of a barriers audit, guiding educators to drill down to identify the specific challenges faced by each learner.   

Moving from barriers to solutions

Once specific barriers have been identified, it is important to ask the question: “What does this learner need in order to excel academically?” This ensures that the focus moves from the ‘disadvantage’ to the ‘solution’ and avoids any unintentional lowering of expectations of high-performance outcomes. The danger of getting stuck on describing ‘barriers’ or ‘challenges’ is that it can excuse, or lead to acceptance of, attainment gaps.

Encouraging staff to complete a simple table like the one below can assist in identifying needs and consequent actions. In this case, an audit of barriers has identified that the learner, a Year 7 pupil, has weak digital literacy as she had very limited access to a computer in the past.

You can read more about strategies to close the attainment gap in Rachel’s books Obstetrics For Schools (2021) and The A-Z of Diversity and Inclusion (2024), with additional support available through HFL Education.

More from this series:

• Closing the attainment gap – part 2: eliminating economic exclusion
• Closing the attainment gap – part 3: developing a sense of belonging and status in economically disadvantaged learners

Plus: this year's NACE Conference 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.

Hodder Education’s Review magazines provide subject-specific expertise aimed at GCSE and A-level students, featuring the latest research, thought-provoking articles, exam-style questions and discussion points to deepen learners’ subject knowledge and develop independent learning skills. 

Earlier this academic year, we partnered with Hodder on a live webinar for NACE members, followed by an opportunity to undertake a free trial subscription to the Review magazines, and then reconvening for an online focus group to share experiences, ideas and feedback.

Below are 15 ways NACE members suggested this resource could be used:

1. Wider reading – encouraging learners to read more widely in their subjects, developing deeper and broader subject knowledge
2. Flipped learning – tasking students with reading an article (or articles) on a topic ahead of a lesson, so they are prepared to discuss during class time (members noted that this approach benefits from practising reading comprehension during lesson time first)
3. Developing cultural capital – exposure to content, contexts, vocabulary, and text formats which learners might not otherwise encounter
4. Independent research and project work – to support independent research and projects such as EPQs, for example by using the digital archives to search on a particular theme
5. Developing literacy and vocabulary – exposure to subject-specific and advanced vocabulary; this was highlighted by some schools as a particular concern post-pandemic
6. Shared text during lessons – used to support lessons on a particular topic, and/or to develop comprehension skills
7. Developing exam skills – using the magazines’ links to specific exam skills/modules, and practice exam questions at the end of articles
8. Examples of academic/exam skills in practice – providing examples of how a text or topic could be approached and analysed, and ways of structuring an essay/response
9. Library resource – signposted to students and teachers by school librarian to ensure a diverse, challenging reading menu is available to all 
10. Linking learning to real-world contexts – providing examples of how curriculum content is being applied in current contexts around the world, helping to bring learning to life
11. Broadening career horizons – examples of different careers in each subject area, giving learners exposure to a range of potential future pathways
12. Extracurricular provision – used as a resource to support subject-specific clubs, or general research/debate clubs 
13. Developing critical thinking and oracy skills – to support strategies such as the Harkness method, as part of a wider focus on developing critical thinking and oracy skills
14. Exposure to academic research – preparing students for further education and career opportunities
15. Fresh perspectives on curriculum content – new angles and insights on well-established modules and topics – for teachers, as well as students!

Find out more:

• Sample issues of the Review magazines
• Impact study: Politics Review
• Impact study: Hindsight (GCSE History)
• Posters and revision PDFs from the magazines
• NACE webinar: Enrichment and extension in secondary subjects

Discount offer for NACE members

NACE members can benefit from a 25% discount on Hodder's digital and print resources, including the Review magazines (excluding student £15 subscriptions). To access this, and our full range of member offers, log in and visit our member offers page.

Does your school use the Review magazines or a similar resource? To share your experience and ideas, contact communications@nace.co.uk

Key questions to consider

Note on diversity in resource formats

Further reading and resources