Best Practice

The Excellence Pathway: Supporting student progress

Pupil Attainment & Progress Quality First Teaching
The Excellence Pathway at Uppingham Community College supports the progress of high-achieving students but also offers high expectations and opportunities for all students to thrive and excel. Clare Duffy explains
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The term “more able” (and previously “gifted and talented”) is used to identify a small cohort of students in school who are highly skilled or knowledgeable in a particular area.

At Uppingham Community College we have always identified our top 10% of students in each year academically and labelled them as our “more able” cohort.

However, this approach started to feel as if it went against our aim to develop a truly inclusive school culture. I have previously written in SecEd about our approach to developing independent learners and an inclusive culture (this latter article appearing in SecEd’s recent vulnerable learners supplement).

As opportunities presented themselves, we found ourselves frequently asking why these should only be offered to a select few students, when all of our students can excel in a wide range of areas, including academic study, expressive arts, and sporting performance.

Therefore, last year we changed our approach by developing our Excellence Pathway, which seeks to nurture those talents by offering a broad provision of enrichment and extension activities that is available to all students.

We are well aware that the progress of “more able” students can be problematic. Indeed, back in 2013 Ofsted identified that “the most able students in non-selective secondary schools are not achieving as well as they should”. Its report at the time added: “In many schools, expectations of what the most able students should achieve are too low.” (Ofsted, 2013)

We wanted our Excellence Pathway to support the progress of our high-achieving students but also offer opportunities for other students to thrive, built upon having high expectations of every student.

The UCC Excellence Pathway is designed to be as inclusive as possible. For this reason, we have deliberately moved away from having a traditional “more able” list. Our highest attaining students are still identified upon entry to school via key stage 2 data and teacher observation and these students are actively encouraged to get involved in extra-curricular activities (we have whole school lists based on academic performance and subject-specific lists decided by teachers).

However, our belief is that every student should have the same opportunity – in our classrooms they will all be well supported and challenged, and outside of the classroom they will all have access to enriching experiences. We want all of our students to feel that there is something relevant and interesting for them to pursue within the Excellence Pathway.

In order to help address the concern that “leaders in our secondary schools have not done enough to create a culture of scholastic excellence” (Ofsted, 2013) we have adopted the motto “Supportive challenge for every student”.

The pathway resources come with the proviso that much of the provision is optional for students and that while students will be actively encouraged by their teachers to get involved, it is those students who are self-motivated who will get the most out of the Excellence Pathway.

This feeds into our culture of promoting “scholastic excellence” across all subjects and all year groups – teachers routinely offer stretch and challenge in their lessons and there is a wide range of enrichment opportunities.

 

The Excellence Pathway

Our Excellence Pathway is captured in a student and parent booklet which is divided into three distinct areas, populated with information provided by our heads of department for each subject:

  1. Characteristics of successful students within each subject.
  2. Additional activities offered in each year to stretch and challenge students.
  3. Suggested extension activities to encourage independent learning.

 

1, Student characteristics

This section of the pathway is a list of characteristics which might be displayed by an excellent student in each subject area. It is a useful tool for teachers to use to help them identify if a student has a particular aptitude for their subject.

It also helps to address Ofsted’s concern that “teaching is insufficiently focused on the most able at key stage 3” (Ofsted, 2013) by alerting staff to student traits to be aware of which they can then develop through adaptive teaching.

For example, in drama an excellent student might be great at working collaboratively, in history they might be naturally inquisitive about the past, and in science they might be very good at recognising patterns and relationships in data.

Rather than providing a fixed checklist of what excellent students look like in each subject, the idea is that this is used as a guide, recognising that all students are different and will demonstrate their ability in different ways.

This section of the pathway is also useful for students to use as it can help them identify where their strengths lie.

 

2, Enrichment Programme

Our Enrichment Programme sits within our Excellence Pathway and includes all the additional activities available to our students, categorised by subject area and year group.

These additional activities are offered to stretch and challenge students in each subject area and include clubs, trips, competitions, and events.

This approach complements our whole-school trip strategy, where we expect each department to offer enriching experiences for students to support a broad extra-curricular provision. Examples include activities such as visits to local galleries in art and design, key stage 3 and 4 book clubs in English, Eco-club in geography, and Language Leaders in modern foreign languages. Again, we encourage every student to get involved with as many opportunities as possible.

 

3, Extension activities

The National Association for Able Children (NACE) recommends that schools have three principles to support cognitive challenge as outlined in its Making space for able learners publication (see further information):

  1. Curriculum organisation and design.
  2. Rich and extended talk and cognitive discourse to support cognitive challenge.
  3. Design and management of cognitively challenging learning opportunities.

Within our Excellence Pathway there are suggested age-appropriate activities which are designed to develop and extend students’ understanding of a particular subject area. These include a range of ideas which can be pursued through independent or group study.

In this way, we are actively addressing the third NACE recommendation by providing a wide range of cognitively challenging learning opportunities.

Many of these extension activities are a legacy from the pandemic and home-schooling – students became used to learning at home and we wanted to capitalise on the wide provision we had offered online.

Consequently, we took the most successful subject activities and used them, along with new resources, to create an enrichment section of our school website which we can direct students and parents to.

These resources enhance the knowledge covered in our core school curriculum. Examples include creating code at home using free online platforms for computer science, joining summer school workshops for music, and designing and making junk models at home for design technology.

The Excellence Pathway also includes a section within each subject area with suggestions on how parents can best support their child at home with their learning as well as activities they can do together such as providing specific resources, arranging family trips to recommended destinations, or watching films/reading books together.

 

Extra provision

As well as the subject-specific provision offered through our Excellence Pathway, we provide a wide range of generic enrichment opportunities to nurture excellence in our students. These activities include:

  • A programme of lunchtime lectures delivered by teachers or guest speakers.
  • University and college visits.
  • Alumni visits and talks.
  • Charity work.
  • The student leadership team.
  • Duke of Edinburgh award.
  • Higher Project.

To support the delivery of our Excellence Pathway teachers receive regular training on adaptive teaching strategies. We also provide dedicated time on the school calendar for sessions called Embedding Curriculum Provision, which allows teachers to meet within departments to create resources to support stretch and challenge.

The progress of the highest attaining students is closely monitored and if there are concerns the head of year becomes involved, liaising with teachers and parents and arranging mentoring if needed. This way both our academic and pastoral teams are working together to support the student.

 

Final thoughts

Our Excellence Pathway originated from a desire to offer inclusive opportunities for all students while still challenging our most able students.

It is important to offer a wide range of opportunities which suit all skills and interests in order to engage as many students as possible.

Ensure you communicate well with parents to make them aware of the provision available and encourage them to get involved in their child’s learning.

 

Further information and resources