Challenge for All - Evidence Informed CPD Toolkit

A comprehensive, evidence-informed professional development toolkit designed to help secondary teachers and teaching assistants promote meaningful challenge, deepen pupils’ thinking and maintain ambitious expectations for all learners.

Challenge is not about giving pupils more work. It is about increasing the quality, depth and sophistication of their thinking.

This professionally designed 26 slide interactive CPD presentation and accompanying staff handbook explores how teachers can move beyond traditional extension activities to embed meaningful challenge into everyday classroom practice.

Drawing on established educational research, including Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction and guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation, the resource combines academic foundations with practical, immediately applicable classroom strategies.

What’s Included?

A visually engaging CPD presentation featuring:

• Five dimensions of meaningful challenge: depth, precision, explanation, application and productive struggle
• The difference between genuine intellectual challenge and simply providing additional work
• Practical approaches to developing higher-order thinking and disciplinary understanding
• Effective questioning strategies that promote justification, evaluation and critical thinking
• Scaffolding that maintains high expectations while supporting pupils with SEND
• Strategies for challenging higher prior attaining pupils without unnecessary acceleration
• Subject-specific examples from English, mathematics, science, history, Religious Studies, art, PE and technology
• A practical framework for evaluating challenge in classroom teaching