In this three-part series, Matt Bromley considers practical approaches for supporting ‘high-attaining’ students. This is part three. Catch up with parts one and two.
The first article in this series offered five practical strategies for challenging high-attaining learners as well as five more for motivating them and avoiding apathy.
And in part two I offered five general classroom tactics as well as ideas for supporting high-attaining learners across 10 subject disciplines.
To conclude this series, we’ll look at ways of supporting high-attainers who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and take a step back to consider the importance of creating a whole-school culture of challenge.
Supporting high-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds
When we speak about disadvantage, we often focus – rightly – on barriers: socio-economic hardship, limited access to resources, lower levels of parental engagement. But we must also be cautious not to conflate disadvantage with a lack of ability. This conflation risks doing a disservice to a significant, and often overlooked, cohort: learners from disadvantaged backgrounds who are also, or have the potential to be, high-attainers.
Disadvantage is not a proxy for low potential. It is, rather, a reflection of unequal starting points, not fixed destinations. Within any disadvantaged cohort, we should expect to find learners of all abilities – including those capable of excelling. The tragedy is that too often, these learners fall through the cracks, because either they do not fit the stereotype, their compliant behaviour masks under-challenge, or we mistake their limited vocabulary or cultural capital as low intelligence.
If we are serious about equity, then we must be equally serious about aspiration – and that means identifying and nurturing high potential wherever it is found.
Nationally, data tells a stark story: high-attaining learners from disadvantaged backgrounds are significantly less likely to sustain high performance through to the end of secondary school and into higher education than their more advantaged peers. Research shows that learners who are both high prior attainers and eligible for the Pupil Premium are disproportionately less likely to achieve top grades at GCSE compared to their wealthier peers with similar prior attainment (see for example Holt-White & Cullinane, 2023).
This is not due to a deficit in ability. Rather, it is the result of systemic issues: lower expectations, less access to enrichment opportunities, a lack of tailored challenge, and reduced cultural capital. In short, we risk squandering talent not because it is lacking, but because it is overlooked.
And so, the task for schools is clear: we must actively seek out high-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds, understand their specific barriers, and provide the challenge, structure, and support that will allow them not just to survive, but to thrive.
Labels matter. As I argued in the first instalment of this series, the language we use – “most able”, “gifted”, “high prior attainment” – carries weight. For learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, labels can be both a gateway and a gatekeeper.
We must therefore identify high potential carefully and inclusively, using a combination of data, teacher professional judgement, and contextual understanding. Prior attainment is a helpful starting point, but it should not be the sole measure.
Equally, we must interrogate what we mean by “disadvantage”. Free school meals (FSMs) eligibility or Pupil Premium funding are proxies, but they do not capture the full complexity of lived experience. We should adopt a more nuanced understanding – one that considers familial, linguistic, and social capital, and looks for intersectional disadvantage (e.g. EAL, SEND, ethnicity, etc).
Once identified, these learners must not be treated as anomalies. Rather, they should be at the centre of our provision for high-attainment.
So, what strategies are proven to work for high-attaining learners from disadvantaged backgrounds?
1, Teach to the top, scaffold down
Teach to the top – high expectations of all learners and giving all learners access to excellence, then scaffolding for those who might initially struggle. Rather than pitching to the middle, we should assume that every learner – including those from disadvantaged backgrounds – is capable of accessing high-level thinking.
As such, we should start lessons with aspirational objectives, then scaffold support for those who need it. This approach avoids the trap of under-expectation and prevents the drift into “safe but shallow” learning.
High-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds need stretch from the outset, not as an afterthought.
2, Challenge through complexity, not volume
Learners from disadvantaged backgrounds often face time poverty outside school that translates into a lack of resources and support – so the answer is not “more homework” but better homework. The same is true in class: challenge should mean deeper thinking, not more tasks. Asking learners to evaluate, justify, hypothesise, and reflect creates intellectual stretch without overwhelming workload.
We could also use open-ended questions, tiered tasks, and activities that demand nuance. Instead of asking for another paragraph, we could ask for a counterargument. Instead of more practice, we could ask for synthesis.
3, Embed metacognition and self-regulation
Research – including from the Education Endowment Foundation (Quigley et al, 2021) – shows that metacognitive strategies are particularly effective for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds.
As such, we should teach learners to think about how they learn – to plan, monitor, and evaluate their approaches. High-attainers may appear confident, but that doesn’t mean they know how to learn independently – and high-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to struggle to work independently because, while they have the knowledge, they may lack the skills as well as the resilience needed. Without explicitly teaching these tools, they risk stagnation.
To help, we could use learning journals, structured reflection prompts, and explicit modelling of thinking processes to support this.
4, Foster belonging and aspiration
High-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds can experience imposter syndrome in settings where aspiration feels alien. Building a culture of belonging is not about softening standards, but about making ambition feel accessible.
This starts with relationships: we should get to know learners’ interests, strengths, and fears. It continues with visibility: we should showcase success stories of learners “like them”. Representation matters.
Classroom culture should be one where it is safe to fail, where mistakes are part of growth, and where intellectual risk is celebrated.
5, Provide structured enrichment
Enrichment opportunities – debating clubs, academic competitions, cultural visits – must not be the preserve of the privileged. Learners from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack the informal scaffolding that better-off peers receive at home. Schools must therefore step in, not by offering charity, but by building entitlement: structured access to enrichment, mentoring, and wider reading.
We might consider running “stretch and challenge” evenings for families, so that aspiration is co-constructed. Mentoring, whether peer or adult, is especially effective here – offering both academic and emotional guidance.
6, Celebrate growth, not just performance
Many high-attainers, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, fear failure because they associate success with perfection. We must therefore shift the narrative.
Feedback should highlight effort and strategy, not just outcomes. Progress should be measured against past selves, not others.
This is the essence of equity: ensuring each learner has what they need to make progress, not assuming a level playing field.
In sum…
High-attainers from disadvantaged backgrounds exist in every school. The challenge is not whether they’re there, but whether we see them – and whether we believe they can succeed. Ability is universal; opportunity is not. Our moral and professional imperative is to close that gap, not by lowering the bar, but by raising our support and sharpening our challenge.
A whole-school culture
To conclude this series, I’d like to take a step back and consider the importance of creating a whole-school culture of stretch and challenge…
Creating a whole-school culture of challenge
Stretch and challenge are not afterthoughts for the “brightest and best”, nor are they the preserve of the top sets. In the most effective schools, stretch is systemic, not sporadic. It permeates every corridor, every classroom, every conversation. And crucially, it’s not just for the high-attainers; it’s for every child.
To embed a culture of challenge is to make excellence the norm, not the exception. It’s to signal to every learner: you are capable of more than you think.
Here, then, are five practical strategies for senior and middle leaders seeking to foster a school-wide ethos of academic ambition.
1, Define what ‘challenge’ means
We need to make challenge tangible by articulating what high expectations look like in practice.
Before we can embed a culture of challenge, we need a shared language. Too often, “challenge” becomes a vague buzzword. To avoid this, we need to clarify what it looks like in lessons, in marking, in conversations.
In practice, we might create a whole-school “challenge charter” – a short, shared document that defines what stretch and challenge mean at our school, with concrete examples. We can then use this to inform CPD and curriculum planning.
2, Embed challenge in the curriculum, not just the classroom
Next, we want to bake challenge into curriculum planning so it’s not simply left to chance – or goodwill – in lessons.
Stretch must start at the planning stage. This means reviewing schemes of work to ensure they are knowledge-rich, conceptually ambitious, and sequenced to build complexity over time.
In practice, we might audit curriculum plans across subject teams and ask: Are learners exposed to advanced texts, abstract ideas, and disciplinary thinking? Are misconceptions anticipated and tackled head-on?
3, Prioritise pedagogy that promotes deep thinking
We want to deepen learners’ thinking by asking “why” as well as “what”. We want learners to explain their thinking.
Classroom practice should foster cognitive engagement. That means lessons where learners are not just busy but are thinking hard. The aim is rigour, not speed.
In practice, we might promote strategies such as hinge questions, retrieval practice, Socratic dialogue, and deliberate practice. We might invest in CPD that supports teachers to use scaffolding without spoon-feeding, and to build in planned struggle.
I have written in SecEd about hinge questions and about Socractic dialogue. I’ve also written more expansively on dialogic teaching and on classroom questioning.
4, Create visible aspirations across the school
Culture is caught as much as taught. Learners rise to the level of expectation. We therefore need to make academic ambition visible – on walls, in assemblies, through celebration.
In practice, we might showcase high-quality learner work across subjects, display model essays, extended responses, or creative projects, and celebrate effort and intellectual risk-taking – not just grades. We might also invite former learners, academics, and professionals to speak about the value of challenge and perseverance.
It is about making challenge visible and celebrating hard work and effort; it’s about promoting risk-taking and mistake-making. I have written more about creating a culture of risk-taking.
5, Empower learners to own their learning
I have already argued that choice matters and that learners need a sense of autonomy. I’d go further and say that learners also need to take ownership of their own learning and progress, they need to take responsibility for their success or failure.
Stretch is not something done to learners – it must be owned by them. As such, we need to build metacognitive habits, so learners routinely reflect on how they learn, not just what they learn.
In practice, we might run cross-curriculum reflective sessions on goal-setting, revision strategies, and mindset – perhaps in tutor time or PSHE, then make them domain-specific in subject lessons.
We might also use mentoring programmes for high-attaining learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. And we might work to ensure our rewards system recognises independence, resilience, and intellectual curiosity.
Final thoughts
Supporting high-attaining learners is not about elitism, labels, or bolt-on interventions; it is about equity, ambition, and precision. It means recognising that ability is distributed widely, but opportunity is not. It requires us to be deliberate: in how we plan lessons, shape culture, and build relationships.
Whether a learner is from a privileged background or facing disadvantage, our message must be the same: excellence is for you. And that excellence is not a gift bestowed but a goal to be worked towards – with guidance, scaffolding, and high expectations at every turn.
If we want our high-attainers to thrive – not just survive – then we must champion challenge as a right, not a reward, and make it the beating heart of every classroom and every conversation.
After all, potential isn’t fulfilled by accident; it’s cultivated with intent.
bee | Bromley Education Enterprises Limited 