The government’s schools White Paper contains many notable reforms - set out under the overarching recognition that “our best schools are those where children achieve academically and thrive as people”.

At the Rethinking School project, which involves a group of 40 schools from across the UK working collaboratively to innovate and uncover new ways to help pupils feel engaged and have a sense of belonging, this is music to our ears.

Over the past five years, we’ve been exploring numerous ways to support pupils and staff to both achieve and thrive, and have a lot of ideas that show how this can be done.

Broadening the curriculum

One of the clear calls in the White Paper is for school curricula to be “rich and broad, building every child’s knowledge and their skills so our young people step into a world of change confident in their ability to shape it”.

In pursuit of curriculum breadth, one group of schools has been exploring how the intentional development of transferable skills, such as collaboration and problem solving, can be embedded into curriculum units with the same rigour as academic subjects.

The schools worked with progression documents for key learning skills, such as metacognition, communication and creativity, and designed opportunities to deliberately teach these skills through relevant units of learning.

They turned these progression documents into accessible, student-friendly rubrics to support peer and self-assessment.

Another group designed online learner profiles, portfolios that capture the full range of pupils’ learning and development, not just their final exam results.

The profiles evidence the development of learning skills, the extent to which pupils have lived up to the school’s values, learning moments of which they are proud, and their learning from beyond the school day, such as participation in enrichment activities - a key theme of the White Paper. Students can take these online profiles forward into the next phase of their lives, like a modern version of a CV.

Other schools experimented with introducing oracy, including drama and role-play activities. Some explored progressively teaching oracy skills, as a pedagogical skill, alongside helping teachers to develop the skills to use dialogic teaching as a means to enable deeper learning across the curriculum.

The Mantle of the Expert approach, which involves students taking on the roles of experts (eg, scientists or historians) working for a client in a fictional scenario, was found to be particularly powerful for learning content.

Other schools introduced the concept of “tinkering” and design cycles into science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects to make learning more exciting and purposeful.

This involved rethinking the traditional flow of teaching in Stem subjects to include time for tinkering with equipment and resources, direct teaching of skills and using this knowledge to design a product.

Some schools created tinker stations in their primary classrooms, alongside the standard reading and maths areas.

Engagement and inclusion

The White Paper also advocates for schools to do more to improve attendance and belonging - areas where our partner schools have also already been innovating.

For example, one group of schools explored diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging by creating an audit tool for the nine protected characteristics from the Equality Act. This tool helps schools to embed diversity into their curriculum and culture so that every individual feels seen and valued.

A second group looked at switching its focus from traditional, sanction-based discipline to a relational culture that emphasises emotional regulation for both adults and pupils.

By fostering psychological safety and using restorative practices, these schools plan to reduce exclusions and create a more inclusive environment.

Other schools are exploring how the introduction of playful learning as a pedagogical principle can increase engagement in learning for young children.

Some schools are bringing local community action projects into their curricula, teaching young people the skills to make real meaningful change through authentic, purposeful experiences.

To support teacher retention, some schools have explored models of professional development that prioritise teacher autonomy and long-term classroom impact.

Others have introduced design thinking as a school improvement strategy, which enables all staff to engage in strategic decision-making and designing innovative practice solutions.

What have we learned?

As a collective of schools, working together to find opportunities to increase engagement and belonging, we have discovered that despite budget and accountability challenges, there are things we can change that improve the educational experience for both pupils and staff.

We have also learned that there is no on-size-fits-all answer to the challenge.

Our pupils, staff and communities are all different, and all present unique opportunities as well as unique challenges.

But working together across phases, specialisms and geographical locations has enabled us to innovate better solutions - which we fully intend to continue to share to help others - and meet the ambition of the schools White Paper.

Liz Robinson is CEO of Big Education, a multi-academy trust running three schools in London, and Sarah Seleznyov is strategic lead for learning and development for Big Education