Guidance, ideas and examples to support schools in developing their curriculum, pedagogy, enrichment and support for more able learners, within a whole-school context of cognitively challenging learning for all. Includes ideas to support curriculum development, and practical examples, resources and ideas to try in the classroom. Popular topics include: curriculum development, enrichment, independent learning, questioning, oracy, resilience, aspirations, assessment, feedback, metacognition, and critical thinking.
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Posted By Misba Mir,
03 March 2026
Updated: 23 February 2026
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Deputy Headteacher Misba Mir explains why and how Carlton Junior and Infant School has developed an “idiom curriculum” to enhance learners’ understanding and use of figurative language across the school.
The idiom curriculum at Carlton Junior and Infant School has been designed to systematically develop pupils’ spoken language, reading comprehension and writing skills from Reception through to Year 6.
Why teach idioms?
Idioms and figurative expressions are commonly used in everyday classroom interactions and texts, yet their meanings are often not transparent. The explicit teaching of idioms supports pupils’ understanding that language can be used both literally and figuratively. This is particularly important for younger pupils and those developing early language skills, as idiomatic expressions frequently appear in stories, classroom discourse and wider reading material. Without direct teaching, idioms can present a barrier to comprehension. Regular exposure and discussion allow pupils to access texts more confidently and engage meaningfully with language-rich learning opportunities.
At our school, this focus on idiomatic language is particularly important as a significant proportion of pupils speak English as an additional language (EAL) and enter school with limited expressive and receptive vocabulary. Without explicit teaching, pupils with EAL are at risk of misunderstanding instructions, narratives and teacher modelling.
What makes an effective “idiom curriculum”?
The idiom curriculum developed at Carlton Junior and Infant School ensures that idiomatic language is taught deliberately, in context and through repeated exposure, enabling pupils to develop a secure understanding over time. By introducing three idioms per year group and revisiting them regularly, the curriculum ensures that pupils build secure, cumulative knowledge of figurative language, which is a key component of language comprehension and fluency.
The curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure progression. In the early years and Key Stage 1, idioms are introduced through practical, visual and oral activities that support understanding and vocabulary acquisition. As pupils move through Key Stage 2, they are encouraged to apply idioms in context, explore shades of meaning and consider how figurative language enhances effect and audience engagement in both spoken and written work. This progression reflects Ofsted’s emphasis on a coherently planned curriculum that builds knowledge over time.
The weekly inclusion of idiom teaching at the start of English lessons promotes regular retrieval and application. Recapping previously taught idioms each term strengthens long-term memory and supports pupils in making connections between new and prior learning. This approach aligns with evidence-informed practice and Ofsted’s focus on learning that is remembered and used fluently.
How does this support more able learners?
For more able learners, the idiom curriculum provides valuable opportunities for depth and challenge. These pupils are encouraged to analyse idioms, compare expressions with similar meanings, consider cultural and historical origins, and experiment with figurative language in their own writing. This allows more able learners to deepen their understanding of language structure and meaning, rather than simply accelerating through content. Such opportunities support higher-level thinking, precise vocabulary use and stylistic awareness, all of which are essential for advanced literacy outcomes.
Overall, this idiom curriculum supports high expectations for all pupils, promotes rich language development and ensures equitable access to figurative language. It contributes to pupils becoming articulate, confident communicators who can understand and use language effectively across the curriculum, in line with Ofsted’s expectations for quality of education and ambition for every learner.
NACE members can view Carlton Junior and Infant School’s idiom curriculum here.
About the author
Misba Mir is a Deputy Headteacher, English Lead and Year 6 Teacher at Carlton Junior and Infant School, West Yorkshire, with over 14 years of teaching experience. She leads on curriculum development and school-wide challenge, ensuring high standards, ambition and engagement for all pupils. Misba is passionate about fostering a positive learning culture, supporting staff development, and preparing pupils for success academically, socially and emotionally. Carlton Junior and Infant School has held the NACE Challenge Award since 2020 and is an active member of the NACE community.
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Posted By Nettlesworth Primary School,
02 February 2026
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5 steps to create an inclusive and challenging curriculum
Donna Lee, Headteacher of Nettlesworth Primary School, County Durham
Designing a curriculum that is both inclusive and challenging is essential for ensuring every learner thrives. At Nettlesworth Primary School, we’ve worked hard to create an approach that raises expectations for all while celebrating diversity and individual strengths. Here’s our five-step plan, with practical examples from our journey.
Step 1: Start with a clear vision
An inclusive and challenging curriculum begins with a shared vision. Define what ‘inclusive’ and ‘challenging’ mean in your context. For us, inclusivity means every child feels valued and supported, regardless of ability, background, or need. Challenge means providing opportunities for deep thinking and problem-solving. Our school aims to provide all children with a well-planned and balanced education taking full account of national curriculum statutory requirements. Within the bounds of this we also provide for individual children’s special needs which may require more challenging work or additional help. We ensure there is a whole-school commitment and a clear focus to providing for more able, gifted and talented pupils. We provide pupils with a wide range of experiences and opportunities individualised to their personal needs and interests. Parents are closely involved in the education of their child and are consulted about their provision.
Example: We held an inset day looking at developing our curriculum further to meet the individual needs of our children where staff and governors contributed ideas. Pupils created posters in a whole-school workshop showing what ‘challenge’ looks like in their learning –many highlighted resilience and curiosity rather than just ‘hard work.’ This helped us shape a vision that everyone understood and owned.
Step 2: Audit and adapt your curriculum
Once your vision is clear, review your curriculum through the lens of inclusivity and challenge. Ask:
Does every subject offer opportunities for higher-order thinking?
Are resources and texts representative of diverse cultures and perspectives?
Do we provide scaffolds for those who need support without capping expectations?
Example: During our curriculum audit, we made sure there were opportunities planned for the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences; the ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources; and the ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry. In maths, we added reasoning challenges to every lesson – such as ‘Explain why this method works’ –to deepen understanding.
Step 3: Embed differentiation and personalisation
Adaptive teaching isn’t about giving ‘more work’ to some and ‘less work’ to others. It’s about designing tasks that allow multiple entry points and varied outcomes.
Example: In Year 4 science, when exploring electricity, pupils could choose how to present their findings: a diagram, a written explanation, or a short video. This allowed all learners to access the challenge while showcasing their strengths.
Step 4: Foster a culture of high expectations
Curriculum design alone won’t create challenge unless it’s supported by a culture that values effort, resilience, and growth.
Example: We use growth mindset and games values to celebrate pupils who take risks and learn from mistakes. In maths, learn from each other and share our learning – pupils share an error they made and explain what they learned from it. This normalises mistakes and encourages reflection. Parents are involved too: we run workshops on growth mindset so the message continues at home.
Step 5: Review, reflect, and refine
Creating an inclusive and challenging curriculum is an ongoing process. Schedule regular reviews using data, observations, and feedback.
Example: Each term, we hold curriculum review meetings where staff share successes and challenges. Recently, feedback showed pupils wanted more collaborative tasks, so we introduced ‘Think-Pair-Share’ and group problem-solving in maths. We also use NACE’s audit tools annually to benchmark progress and set new goals.
Final thoughts
An inclusive and challenging curriculum isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing better. By following these five steps – vision, audit, differentiation, culture, and review – you can create a learning environment where every child feels included and inspired to achieve their best.
About the author
Donna Lee is committed to the highest standards of teaching and learning and believes that all children deserve teachers who believe in them and have high expectations of all. She has been an Inclusion Coordinator for over 25 years; inclusion and individualised learning were the focus for an MA in Special Educational Needs and NPQH. Donna believes you work in partnership with parents to develop a school where no one fails; every child leaves having identified a talent, a skill, an intelligence through which they can become whatever they want to be. She shares this belief and expertise through network meetings and conferences throughout the North East.
In 2013-2014, Donna led Nettlesworth Primary School as Acting Deputy Headteacher in obtaining the NACE Challenge Award for the first time. She then became Headteacher of the school in January 2018, immediately leading the team through an Ofsted inspection, where they continue to be a good school. She has also led the school through NACE re-accreditation assessments in July 2018, July 2021 and 2024 – now as a NACE Ambassador School.
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Posted By Dr Richard Bustin,
02 February 2026
Updated: 02 February 2026
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Curriculum making: bringing an ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum to life
The Curriculum and Assessment Review published in late 2025 (DfE) sets out a bold and ambitious role for the English curriculum. As the report asserts:
“The refreshed curriculum must provide the knowledge and skills that will empower young people to thrive as citizens, in work and throughout life, in the light of the challenges and opportunities facing them today.” (p.47)
Realising this ambition in practice requires teachers to focus on what they are teaching, with an understanding of how our subject knowledge and skills can be empowering for young people. This means we need to think about knowledge less as a means to get through an exam, and more as a way to enable students to be productive, creative citizens of the modern world.
A curriculum is much more than a set of learning objectives or facts on a page. ‘Curriculum making’ describes the deliberate process that a teacher goes through to bring a curriculum to life. There are three main considerations, modelled by the overlapping circles in Figure 1: the subject, the student and the choices teachers make.

Figure 1: Curriculum making – from Bustin (2024), p.73, based on Lambert and Morgan (2010)
The first consideration is the subject discipline itself. This includes the knowledge, skills and values that make up each school subject. The sort of knowledge that is inherent in this type of curriculum thinking is not an inert list of facts but is ‘powerful’ knowledge, a term from the work of Michael Young (e.g. 2008). This type of knowledge has derived from the disciplined thinking that comes from engagement with a school subject; it is the ‘best’ scholarly thought that has been developed within that particular discipline but is never a given as it can be replaced by better knowledge as more research is done.
Powerful knowledge can include substantive knowledge – the claims of truth made by a subject; and procedural knowledge – knowing how to think with and through the subject, which often leads to distinctive subject-specific skills. Access to this sort of ambitious knowledge should be seen as a minimum curricular entitlement for all young people. Indeed, the Curriculum and Assessment Review contends that:
“a curriculum centred on ‘powerful knowledge’ provides a shared frame of reference for children and young people from different backgrounds, enabling them to engage more effectively with issues affecting them and the world around them.” (p.45)
My own research with over 200 teachers across three schools, published in What are we Teaching? Powerful knowledge and a capabilities curriculum (Bustin, 2024) identifies how powerful knowledge might be expressed in different subjects across the curriculum.
A second consideration of curriculum making is the lived experiences of the young people themselves. Teachers understand their pupils, their motivations and their prior knowledge, which can be drawn upon to develop engaging lessons. Students’ own life experiences can also be a meaningful starting point for engagement.
The third consideration of curriculum making is teacher choices. Subject-specialist teachers are best placed to decide on the most appropriate pedagogy. This could include introducing more active learning activities, direct instruction, deliberate practice or factual recall. What is clear is that a lesson cannot be an ‘off the shelf’ presentation sent out to all teachers to deliver uncritically. Instead, it should involve a careful selection of content, framed for that particular class at that particular time. A lesson first thing on a Monday morning might look different to the same lesson taught on Friday afternoon.
It is the centre point of the diagram above where the possibilities of curriculum making can be realised. Teachers make choices about what to teach, and how to teach it, and it is through engagement with the powerful knowledge of subjects that students can develop capabilities to see the world in new ways: to spot fake news, to understand nuance in complex debates, to think critically and become autonomous, free-thinking individuals. Subject-specialist teachers, given the autonomy to design their own lessons and decide on their own pedagogy, are key to realising this vision.
References:
Bustin, R. (2024). What are we Teaching? Powerful knowledge and a capabilities curriculum. Carmarthen: Crown House.
Department for Education (2025). Curriculum and Assessment review. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/curriculum-and-assessment-review-final-report. Accessed December 2025.
Lambert, D. and Morgan, J. (2010). Teaching Geography 11-18: a conceptual approach. Maidenhead: Open University.
Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in: from social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. Abingdon: Routledge.
 About the author
Dr Richard Bustin is Director of Pedagogy, Innovation and Staff Development and Head of Geography at Lancing College, UK. He is the author of What are we teaching? Powerful knowledge and a capabilities curriculum – available now from Crown House.
For discounts on this and all purchases from Crown House Publishing, log in for details of all NACE member offers.
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Posted By Mark Enser and Zoe Enser,
01 December 2025
Updated: 01 December 2025
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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).

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Posted By Anjali Patel, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE),
04 June 2025
Updated: 04 June 2025
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Anjali Patel, Lead Advisory Teacher, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE)
The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) is an independent UK charity, and English Association, dedicated to raising the literacy achievement of children by putting quality literature at the heart of all learning.
It is a charity with a national and international reputation for providing excellent literacy training and resources for primary schools, based on extensive research and best practice.
CLPE’s core beliefs and mission align with those of NACE in that we believe it is every child’s right to achieve and to be given the opportunities and experiences necessary to thrive.

What is Power of Reading?
CLPE’s research around the importance of using quality texts as the basis for English planning and quality teaching, and to provide reflective professional development, is embodied in our flagship training programme: the Power of Reading.
Built on 50 years of CLPE’s research, the Power of Reading explores the impact high-quality literature has on children’s engagement and attainment as readers and the link between reading and children’s writing development, supported by creative teaching approaches to develop a whole-school curriculum, which fosters a love of reading and writing to raise achievement in literacy.
In short, we recommend the kinds of books that provide challenge and opportunity for sustained shared study in whole-class English lessons with detailed teaching sequences that enable teachers across all primary Key Stages to work in depth with the best children’s literature being published today.
When ‘broad and balanced’ became overloaded and surface-level
So why do we believe should Power of Reading be at the heart of any English curriculum?
At CLPE, our school members are integral to our work. We benefit from thousands of schools and teachers being part of that CLPE community and this means we can draw on our relationship with and research in these schools to design professional development programmes and teaching resources that remain relevant.
The Power of Reading programme is refined each year, informed by the evaluations of participants and to take into account new research or statutory guidance or developments from the DfE and Ofsted and to support our schools to interpret and implement policy and guidance with confidence and integrity to what we know works.
In recent years, the issues raised with us by teachers and leaders on our INSETs and training sessions has been overridingly related to concerns around understanding how to use language to communicate meaning and for effect, both orally and in writing; and in editing, refining and response to writing. Perhaps their views resonate with you?
“Children are not motivated to edit their work beyond proofreading for spelling or other ‘surface features’.”
“There is so much curriculum content, we are teaching too much at a surface level rather than teaching at depth, particularly in writing.”
“The EYFS curriculum is too constrained for periods of sustained shared thinking to happen. Reduced time is spent at play, with more carpet time ‘sitting and listening’.”
“Responses to texts don’t have depth, children aren’t able to go below the surface and be reflective and evaluative.”
“Some set structures and routines, e.g. ‘we have to do writing every day’, ‘we have to do grammar on a Wednesday’ are barriers to developing effective practice, particularly in writing.”
“Not enough time and expertise in how to respond to writing as readers (teachers and children) – text references are features-based, not drawing on language and composition for effect.”
Providing depth to close the disadvantage gap
It is interesting to explore these commonly shared views through the lens of inclusion and to make the connection between being ‘more able’ and the kinds of experiences that lead to this opportunity to thrive and become highly literate.
Children from privileged backgrounds are more likely to experience the kinds of book ownership and book sharing experiences that support them to deepen their reader response and understanding of the world so that – in school – they can begin to explore how authors, illustrators or poets can achieve this response and how they themselves can make meaning for a reader in their own writing.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more reliant on classroom routines and resources to be able to access and make connections with high-quality, representative children’s literature; to engage in daily book sharing experiences; develop deeper reader response through sustained book talk; and, as Frank Smith (1982) put it, ‘join the literacy club’ (1).
If teachers are saying they are constrained by an overloaded curriculum or lack opportunity to develop subject knowledge through quality professional development (2), the English curriculum will become increasingly disjointed and ‘surface’ level with a disadvantage gap that grows ever wider. When what all teachers want is to give every child the opportunity to work at greater depth whatever their starting point.
The last thing we want is for only privileged children to be afforded the benefits of challenge and so we must provide an equitable curriculum that enables all children to be motivated to make and create meaning with rich texts through non-reductive teaching approaches and with expert teachers.
And this is why we believe at CLPE that the Power of Reading is as necessary today as it was 20 years ago, if not more so.
The impact of a reading-rich English curriculum
The Power of Reading programme stems from CLPE’s seminal research publication The Reader in the Writer (3). This research aimed to investigate how children's writing might be influenced by studying challenging literary texts in the classroom.
The findings from that research serve as the backbone to CLPE’s training programme and they are at the heart of the Power of Reading teaching sequences that support our members to develop an evidence-led literacy curriculum in their own classrooms.
After 20 years, and with thousands of teachers trained across the UK and internationally, the programme continues to evidence impact on teachers and children whose schools have participated in the training. All the evidence we collect to measure impact continues to teach us how powerful reading can be for both children’s academic attainment and wider learning and development.
An independent evaluation by Leeds Trinity University reported on the impact of using Power of Reading in 11 Bradford schools from Autumn 2018 to Spring 2019 (4). The report shows that children in these schools made accelerated progress and the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils was significantly narrowed.

More recently, in evaluating the impact of Power of Reading on children in the Early Years (5), the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers was smaller in research schools compared to all pupils within the local area. And when we compared the engagement and attainment of project children at the start and end of their Reception year, the findings were significant with double the number of children working at age-related expectations in Language and Literacy Areas of Learning.
Key recommendations for a challenging English curriculum
So what can we learn from this research to support classroom practice?
If we can create an English curriculum that is evidenced to close the disadvantage gap through exposure to and engagement in high-quality texts leading to increased world and vocabulary knowledge and writing outcomes in which children make deliberate choices for their own readers, we are creating a curriculum in which all children have access to experiences that increase their self-efficacy and the chance to be more able.
Our Associate Schools – in some of the most disadvantaged communities in England – observe children working at and achieving greater depth and this is articulated beautifully in a recent case study from the team at Miriam Lord Community Primary School in Bradford.
The Power of Reading practice and provision at Miriam Lord – and the outcomes observed – connect deeply with NACE’s core principles and can be framed as key recommendations for a challenging English curriculum:
- Ensure teachers have strong subject knowledge of high-quality children’s literature so they can give children access to a range of literary forms within and across all year groups.
“[The children] can talk with a greater depth of knowledge of authors… so their ability to compare themes, characters, likes, dislikes is so much better than it ever was and then that communicates into the writing.”
Find out more about our Power of Reading English curriculum maps.
- Choose books in which they see their own and other realities represented so that you can build authentic reader and writer identities in all children which allow them to develop and demonstrate their abilities.
“The children need to see themselves in books – or at least an element of their lives – in books. They need access to books that they can connect to and that will draw them in and I think the book choices we give them here give them a bigger hook, certainly than the book choices I had when I was growing up.”
Find out more about CLPE’s Reflecting Realities Research.
- Use a range of non-reductive, social and creative teaching approaches to deepen children’s understanding and broaden their experiences, including drama, artwork and storytelling.
“It provides lots of opportunities for immersion and exploration which is really important for a number of children that come to our school because they’ve got deprivation of experience so they don’t get to have those exciting days out or lots of real-world experiences so the books give them that and then they get to participate in role play and activities which enthuse them which then feeds into their writing process.”
Find out about CLPE’s recommended teaching approaches.
- Follow an authentic writing process in which children are making meaning from well-crafted written language, then engage in making conscious choices with their own writing. Focus not on the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ when making such choices, within a community of readers and writers.
“It puts children’s enjoyment at the centre of everything. It’s not focused solely on the final written output and the success criteria which was the case for a number of years and it made the whole writing process quite onerous and quite boring for children.”
Find out more about CLPE’s reader into writing research.
- Make explicit the connections children can make between growing literacy knowledge and skills and in wider curriculum work so that children have opportunity to thrive across a range of contexts and throughout the curriculum.
“It has wider themes threaded through it like geography, history, citizenship so it’s not just English as a stand-alone subject.”
Find out more about the Power of Reading books recommended for each Key Stage.
References
(1) Joining the Literacy Club. Further Essays into Education, Frank Smith (Heinemann, 1987)
(2) Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 2 findings (Ofsted, May 2024)
(3) The Reader in the Writer, Myra Barrs and Valerie Cork (CLPE, 2000)
(4) Leeds Trinity University report on the impact of Power of Reading in the Exceed Academies Trust, Bradford (2019)
(5) The Power of Reading in the Early Years (CLPE, 2023)
Additional resources and support
Plus: save the date! On Friday 3rd October NACE and CLPE are collaborating on a “member meetup” event (free for staff at NACE member schools) exploring approaches to sustain pleasure and challenge in reading and literacy across Key Stages 2 and 3. Details coming soon to the NACE community calendar.
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Posted By Amanda Hubball,
30 January 2025
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Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Alfreton Nursery School, outlines the use of “thinking booklets” to embed challenge into the early years setting.
At Alfreton Nursery School, staff believe that children need an intrinsic level of challenge to enhance learning. This challenge is not always based around adding symbols to a maths problem or introducing scientific language to the magnet explorations. An early years environment has countless opportunities for challenge and this challenge can be provided in creative ways.
Thinking booklets: invitations to think and talk
Within the nursery environment, Alfreton has created curriculum zones. These zones lend themselves to curriculum progression, whilst also providing a creative thread of enquiry which runs through all areas. Booklets can be found in each space and these booklets ask abstract questions and offer provocations for debate. Drawing on the pedagogical approach Philosophy for Children (p4c), we use these booklets to ensure classroom spaces are filled with invitations to think and talk.
Literacy booklets
Booklets within the literacy area help children to reflect on the concepts of reading and writing, whilst promoting communication, breadth of vocabulary and the skills to present and justify an opinion.

For example, within the “Big Question: Writing” booklet, staff and children can find the following questions:
- What is writing?
- If nobody could read, would we still need to write?
Alongside these and other questions, there are images of different types of writing. Musical notation, cave drawings, computer text and graffiti to name but a few. Children are empowered to discuss what their understanding of writing actually is and whether others think the same. Staff are careful not to direct conversations or present their own views.
Maths booklets
Maths booklets are based around all aspects of the subject: shape, size, number. . .
- If a shape doesn’t have a name, is it still a shape?
- What is time?
- If you could be a circle or a triangle, which would you choose and why?
Questions do not need to be based around developing subject knowledge, and the more abstract and creative the question, the more open to all learners the booklets become.
Children explore the questions and share views. On revisiting these questions another day, often opinions will change or become further embellished. Children become aware that listening to different points of view can influence thinking.

Creative questions
Developing the skills of abstract thought and creative thinking is a powerful gift and children enjoy presenting their theories, whilst sometimes struggling to understand that there is no right or wrong answer. For the more analytical thinkers, being asked to consider whether feelings are alive – leading to an exploration of the concept “alive” – can be highly challenging. Many children would prefer to answer, “What is two and one more?”
Alfreton Nursery School’s culture of embracing enquiry, open mindset and respect for all supports children’s levels of tolerance, whilst providing cognitive challenge and opportunities for aspirational discourse. The use of simple strategies to support challenge in the classroom ensures that challenge for all is authentically embedded into our early years practice.
Read more from Alfreton Nursery School:
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early years foundation stage
enquiry
oracy
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Posted By NACE,
05 December 2024
Updated: 05 December 2024
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“Our world is at a unique juncture in history, characterised by increasingly uncertain and complex trajectories shifting at an unprecedented speed. These sociological, ecological and technological trends are changing education systems, which need to adapt. Yet education has the most transformational potential to shape just and sustainable futures.” (UNESCO, Futures of Education)
NACE welcomed the opportunity to respond to the Curriculum and Assessment Review (which closed for submissions on 22 November), based on our work with thousands of schools across all phases and sectors over the last 40 years.
Our response first emphasised the importance of an overarching, strategic vision for curriculum reform based on:
- Evidence and beliefs about the purposes of education and schooling at this point in the century;
- Knowledge of human capacities and capabilities and how they are best nurtured and realised;
- Addressing the needs of the present generation while building the skills of future generations;
- An approach that is sustainable and driven and coordinated by national policy;
- Appropriate selection of knowledge/content and teaching methodologies that are fit for purpose and flexibility in curriculum planning and implementation;
- Recognition of system and structural changes in and outside schools to support curriculum reform;
- Acknowledgement of the professional expertise and agency of educators and the importance of school-level autonomy;
- The perspectives and experiences of groups experiencing barriers to learning and opportunity (equity and inclusion).
Core foundations
NACE supports the importance of a curriculum built on core foundations which include:
- “Language capital” (wide-ranging forms of literacy and oracy) – viz evidence supporting the importance of reading, comprehension and vocabulary acquisition in successful learning and their place at the heart of the curriculum
- Numeracy and mathematical fluency
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Emotional and physical well-being
- Metacognitive and cognitive skills
- Physical and practical skills
- An introduction to disciplinary domains (with a focus not just on content but on initiation into key concepts and processes)
The design of the curriculum needs to allow for the space and time to develop these skills as key threads throughout.
Whilst the current National Curriculum stresses the importance of developing basic literacy and numeracy skills at Key Stage 1, to open the doors to all future learning, schools continue to be pressured by the expectations of the wider curriculum/foundation subjects. This needs to be revisited to ensure that literacy, numeracy and wider skills can be securely embedded before schools expose children to a broader curriculum.
Content: knowledge and competencies
In secondary education an increasingly concept-/process-based approach to delivery of disciplinary fields should be envisaged alongside ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum models already pervasive in many schools. Core foundation competencies and skills should continue to be developed, ensuring that learners acquire so-called ‘transformative competencies’ such as planning, reflection and evaluation. The curriculum must enshrine the ‘learning capital’ (e.g. language, cultural, social and disciplinary capital) which will enable young people to adapt to, thrive in and ultimately shape whatever the future holds.
Knowledge, skills, attitudes and values are developed interdependently. The concept of competency implies more than just the acquisition of knowledge and skills; it involves the mobilisation of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in a range of specific contexts to meet complex demands. In practice, it is difficult to separate knowledge and skills; they develop together. Researchers have recognised how knowledge and skills are interconnected. For example, the National Research Council's report on 21st century competencies (2012) notes that “developing content knowledge provides the foundation for acquiring skills, while the skills in turn are necessary to truly learn and use the content. In other words, the skills and content knowledge are not only intertwined but also reinforce each other.”
Consideration needs to be given to breadth versus balance versus depth in curriculum design, alongside the production of guidance which articulates key and ‘threshold’ concepts and processes in subject areas. NACE training and development stresses the importance of teachers and learners understanding the concept of ‘desirable difficulty’ as this is essential in developing resilience and, therefore, supporting wellbeing. It is difficult to provide learners with appropriate levels of challenge/difficulty and time to work through these if curriculum content is over-heavy. In the later stages of schooling a greater emphasis could be placed on interdisciplinary links and advanced critical thinking competencies.
At all stages of education evidence-based approaches to pedagogy and assessment to maximise student learning should be incorporated into curriculum design. Such practices should also incorporate adaptations and recognition of different learning needs and address issues of equity and removing barriers to learning.
Summary
In schools achieving high-quality provision of challenge for all, the design of the curriculum includes planned progression and continuity for all groups of learners through key stages. Where school leaders understand the steps needed to develop deep learning, knowledge and understanding, rich content and secure skills are developed.

The Curriculum Review presents a much-needed opportunity to interrogate the purposes of curriculum and 21st century schooling, the fitness of the current National Curriculum and potential reforms needed. The review must be holistic, vision- and evidence-led, as well as recognising that a ‘national curriculum’ is only one part of the overall learning experience of children. Revised curriculum proposals and their implementation may also rely on reviewing and transforming existing school structures and systems as well as national resourcing issues to ensure more equitable access to high-quality education no matter where young people live and attend school. The proposals must also take account of ongoing teacher supply and quality issues and possible reforms to teacher education and professional development to match the aspirations of an English education system which is equitable, inclusive and one of the best in the world.
Most importantly, the new curriculum proposals must go much further than previously in trying to ensure that all young people leave school equipped to realise their ambitions for their personal and working lives, and to contribute to shaping their own and others’ destinies in a more equitable and caring society, along with the courage to face the unknown challenges which lie ahead.
Tags:
assessment
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policy
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Posted By Oliver Barnes,
04 December 2024
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Ollie Barnes is lead teacher of history and politics at Toot Hill School in Nottingham, one of the first schools to attain NACE Challenge Ambassador status. Here he shares key ingredients in the successful addition of a module on Hong Kong to the school’s history curriculum. You can read more in this article published in the Historical Association’s Teaching History journal.
When the National Security Law came into effect in Hong Kong, it had a profound and unexpected impact 6000 miles away, in Nottinghamshire’s schools. Important historical changes were in process and pupils needed to understand them. As a history department in a school with a growing cohort of Hong Kongers, it became essential to us that students came to appreciate the intimate historical links between Hong Kong and Britain and this history was largely hidden, or at least almost entirely absent, in the history curriculum.
But exploring Hong Kong gave us an opportunity to tell our students a different story, explore complex concepts and challenge them in new ways. Here I will outline the opportunities that Hong Kong can offer as part of a broad and diverse curriculum.
Image source: Unsplash
1. Tell a different story
In our school in Nottinghamshire, the student population is changing. Since 2020, the British National Overseas Visa has allowed hundreds of families the chance to start a new life in the UK. Migration from Hong Kong has rapidly increased. Our school now has a large Cantonese-speaking cohort, approximately 15% of the school population. The challenge this presented us with was how to create a curriculum which is reflective of our students.
Hong Kong offered us a chance to explore a new narrative of the British Empire. In textbooks, Hong Kong barely gets a mention, aside from throwaway statements like ‘Hong Kong prospered under British rule until 1997’. We wanted to challenge our students to look deeper.
We designed a learning cycle which explored the story of Hong Kong, from the Opium Wars in 1839 to the National Security Law in 2020. This challenged our students to consider their preconceptions about Hong Kong, Britain’s impact and migration.
2. Use everyday objects
To bring the story to life, we focused on everyday objects, which are commonly used by our students and could help to tell the story.
First, we considered a cup of tea. We asked why a drink might lead to war? We had already explored the Boston Tea Party, as well as British India, so students already knew part of this story, but a fresh perspective led to rich discussions about war, capitalism, intoxicants and the illegal opium trade.
Our second object was a book, specifically Mao’s Little Red Book. We used it to explore the impact of communism on China, showing how Hong Kong was able to develop separately, with a unique culture and identity.
Lastly, an umbrella. We asked: how might this get you into trouble with the police? Students came up with a range of uses that may get them arrested, before we revealed that possessing one in Hong Kong today could be seen as a criminal act. This allowed us to explore the protest movement post-handover.
At each stage of our enquiry, objects were used to drive the story, ensuring all students felt connected to the people we discussed.
Umbrella Revolution Harcourt Road View 2014 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
3. Keep it complex
In order to challenge our students, we kept it complex. They were asked to draw connections and similarities between Hong Kong and other former British colonies. We also wanted them to encounter capitalism and communism, growth and inequality. Hong Kong gave us a chance to do this in a new and fresh way.
Part of this complexity was to challenge students’ preconceptions of communism, and their assumptions about China. By exploring the Kowloon walled city, which was demolished in 1994, students could discuss the problems caused by inequality in a globalised capitalist city.
Image source: Unsplash
What next?
Our Year 9 students responded overwhelmingly positively. The student survey we conducted showed that they enjoyed learning the story and it helped them understand complex concepts.
Hong Kong offers curricula opportunities beyond the history classroom. In English, students can explore the voices of a silenced population, forced to flee or face extradition. In geography, Hong Kong offers a chance to explore urbanisation, the built environment and global trade.
Additional reading and resources
Tags:
cognitive challenge
critical thinking
curriculum
enquiry
history
KS3
pedagogy
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Posted By Amanda Hubball,
17 April 2023
Updated: 17 April 2023
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NACE Associate Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Challenge Award-accredited Alfreton Nursery School, explains why and how environmental education has become an integral part of provision in her early years setting.
1. What’s the intent?
The ethics of teaching children of all ages about sustainability is clear. However, teaching such big concepts with such small children needs careful thought. The intention at Alfreton Nursery School is to stimulate an enquiring mind and to nurture children to believe in a solutions-based future.
Exposure to climate change from an adult perspective is dripping into our children’s awareness all the time. At Alfreton Nursery School we believe it is so important to take the current climate and give children a voice and a role within it. The invincibility of the early years mindset has been harnessed, with playful impact.
2. How do I implement environmental education with four-year-olds?
Environment
Just as an effective school environment supports children’s mathematical, creative (etc) development, so our environment at Alfreton is used to educate children on the value of nature. The resources we use are as ethically made and resourced as possible. We use recycled materials and recycled furniture, and lights are on sensors to reduce power consumption.
Like many schools, we have adapted our environment to work with the needs of the planet, and at Alfreton we make our choices explicit for the children. We talk about why the lights don’t stay on all the time, why we have a bicycle parking area in the carpark and why we are sitting on wooden logs, rather than plastic chairs. Our indoor spaces are sprinkled with beautiful large plants, adding to air quality, aesthetics and a sense of nature being a part of us, rather than separate. Incidental conversations about the interdependence of life on our planet feed into daily interactions.
Our biophilic approach to the school environment supports wellbeing and mental health for all, as well as supporting the education of our future generations.
Continuous provision and enhancements
Within continuous provision, resources are carefully selected to enhance understanding of materials and environmental impact. We have not discarded all plastic resources and sent them to landfill. Instead we have integrated them with newer ethical purchasing and take the opportunity to talk and debate with children. Real food is used for baking and food education, not for role play. Taking a balanced approach to the use of food in education feels like the respectful thing to do, as many of our families exist in a climate of poverty.
Larger concepts around deforestation, climate change and pollution are taught in many ways. Our provision for more able learners is one way we expand children’s understanding. In the Aspiration Group children are taught about the world in which they live and supported to understand their responsibilities. We look at ecosystems and explore human impact, whilst finding collaborative solutions to protect animals in their habitats. Through Forest Schools children learn the need to respect the woodlands. Story and reference literature is used to stimulate empathy and enquiry, whilst home-school partnerships further develop the connections we share with community projects to support nature.
We have an outdoor STEM Hive dedicated to environmental education. Within this space we have role play, maths, engineering, small world, science, music… but the thread which runs through this area is impact on the planet. When engaged with train play, we talk about pollution and shared transport solutions. When playing in the outdoor house we discuss where food comes from and carbon footprints. In the Philosophy for Children area we debate concepts like ‘fairness’ – for me, you, others and the planet. And on boards erected in the Hive there are images of how humans have taken the lead from nature. For example, in the engineering area there are images of manmade bridges and dams, along with images of beavers building and ants linking their bodies to bridge rivers.
3. Where will I see the impact?
Our environmental work in school has supported the progression of children across the curriculum, supporting achievements towards the following goals:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development:
- Show resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge
- Express their feelings and consider the feelings of others
Understanding the World:
- Begin to understand the need to respect and care for the natural environment and all living things
- Explore the natural world around them
- Recognise some environments that are different from the one in which they live
(Development Matters, 2021, DfE)
More widely, children are thinking beyond their everyday lived experience and connecting their lives to others globally. Our work is based on high aspirations and a passionate belief in the limitless capacity of young children. Drawing on the synthesis of emotion and cognition ensures learning is lifelong. The critical development of their relational understanding of self to the natural world has seen children’s mental health improve and enabled them to see themselves as powerful contributors, with collective responsibilities, for the world in which they live and grow.
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cognitive challenge
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curriculum
early years foundation stage
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Posted By Trellech Primary School,
17 April 2023
Updated: 17 April 2023
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Kate Peacock, Acting Headteacher at Trellech Primary School, explains how “SMILE books” have been introduced to develop pupil voice and independent learning, while also improving staff planning.
Our vision, here at Trellech Primary, is to ensure the four purposes of the Curriculum for Wales are at the heart of our children’s learning – particularly ensuring that they are “ambitious capable learners” who:
- Set themselves high standards and seek and enjoy challenge;
- Are building up a body of knowledge and have the skills to connect and apply that knowledge in different contexts;
- Are questioning and enjoy solving problems.
What is a “SMILE Curriculum”?
We have always been very proud of the children at Trellech Primary, where we see year on year pupils making good progress in all areas of the curriculum. Following the publication of Successful Futures and curriculum reform in Wales, the school wanted to embrace the changes and be forward-thinking in recognising and nurturing children as learners who are responsible for planning and developing their own learning. As a Pioneer School, we made a commitment to:
- Give high priority to pupil voice in developing their own learning journey.
- Develop pupil voice throughout each year group, key stage and the whole school.
- Embrace the curriculum reform and develop children’s understanding.
- Allow all learners to excel and reach their full potential.
- Ensure each child is given the opportunity to make good progress.
These goals have been developed alongside the introduction of SMILE books, based on our SMILE five-a-day culture:
- Standards
- Modelled behaviour
- Inspiration
- Listening
- Ethical
What is a “SMILE book”?
Based on these key values of the SMILE curriculum, the SMILE books are A3-sized, blank-paged workbooks which learners can use to present their work however they choose. They are used to present the children’s personal learning journey. In contrast to the use of books for subject areas, SMILE books show the development of skills from across the Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLEs) in their own preferred style.
This format enables pupil voice to be at the fore of their journey, while clearly promoting each pupil’s independent learning and supporting individual learning styles. Within a class, each SMILE book will look different, despite the same themes being part of the teaching and learning. Some may be presented purely through illustration with relevant vocabulary, while others develop and present their learning through greater use of text.
Launching the SMILE books
As a Pioneer School we collaborated with colleagues who were at the same point of their curriculum journey as us. Following this collaboration, we agreed to trial the introduction of our SMILE books in Y2 and Y6 with staff who were members of SLT and involved in curriculum reform.
In these early stages, expectations were shared and pupils were given a variety of resources to enable them to present their work in their preferred format within the books – enabling all individuals to lead, manage and present their knowledge, skills and learning independently.
Pupil and parent feedback at Parent Sharing Sessions highlighted positive feedback and demonstrated pupils’ pride in the books. Consequently, SMILE books were introduced throughout the school at the start of the following academic year. For reception pupils scaffolding is provided, but as pupils move through the progression steps less scaffolding is needed; pupil independence increases and is clearly evident in the way work across the AoLEs is presented.
Staff SMILE planning
Following the success of the implementation of pupil SMILE books and to ensure clarity in understanding of the Curriculum for Wales, I decided to trial the SMILE book format myself, to record my planning. This helped me to develop greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the Four Purposes, Cross-Curricular Links, Pedagogical Principles and the What Matters Statements for each of the AoLEs.
During this early trial I wrote each of the planning pages by hand, which enabled me to internalise the curriculum with an increased understanding. Also included were the ideas page for each theme and pupil contributions through the pupil voice page.
This format was shared with the whole staff and has evolved over time. Some staff continue to write and present planning in a creative form, while others use QR codes to link planners to electronic planning sheets and class tracking documentation. The inclusion of the I Can Statements has enabled staff to delve deeper and focus on less but better.
Each SMILE medium-term planning book moves with the cohort of learners, exemplifying their learning journey through the school. The investment of time in medium-term planning enables staff to focus on skills development in short-term planning time. This is evident in the classroom, where lessons focus on skills development and teachers are seen as facilitators of learning.
Impact on teaching and learning
Following our NACE Challenge Award reaccreditation in July 2021, it was recognised that the use of SMILE books had a positive impact on pupil voice and the promotion of independent learning for all. Our assessor reported:
SMILE books, which the school considers to be at the heart of all learning, are used by all year groups. Children complete activities independently in their books showing their own way of learning and presenting their work in a range of styles and formats. As a result, even from the youngest of ages, pupils have become more independent learners who are engaged in their learning because they have been involved in the decision-making process for the topics being taught.
The SMILE approach to learning has strengthened pupil voice and given children the confidence to take risks in their own learning by choosing how they like to learn.
The SMILE approach to learning has created a climate of trust where learners are confident to take risks without the fear of failure and are valued for their efforts. Pupils appreciate that valuable learning often results from making mistakes.
SMILE promotes problem solving and enquiry-based activities to help nurture independent learning.
Using SMILE books, independent learning is promoted and encouraged from the youngest of ages. The SMILE approach encourages MAT learners to lead their own learning by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to know how they best learn. As a result, more able pupils are critical thinkers and have high expectations and aspirations for themselves.
Our SMILE approach continues to develop here at Trellech, ensuring the continual development of our learners and independent learners with a valued voice.
Explore NACE’s key resources for schools in Wales
Tags:
Challenge Award
creativity
curriculum
independent learning
professional development
student voice
Wales
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