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Challenge For All

The Most Able

Meeting The Needs of Most Able Students

At Deptford Green School our students' achievement, progress and contributions to school life are encouraged and valued. The school aims to nurture a lifelong love of learning in students within a happy, caring, secure learning community, which promotes excellence.

We believe that appropriate challenge both in and outside of the classroom allows our students to demonstrate success and build academic and interpersonal skills for their future endeavours.

Our vision for Most Able students is to ensure that they are suitably challenged and supported to maximise their potential; preparing the learners of today to become the leaders of tomorrow.

What Do We Mean by "Most Able Students" 

We use the term “Most able” to identify all children who are classed as “Higher Prior Attaining” students. High Prior Attaining students are those who show great potential to achieve high level outcomes across a range of subjects. Identification of these students begins on entry to Deptford Green School with those who achieved high “scaled scores” in their end of Key Stage 2 assessments in Year 6. They will be expected to work in the ‘Greater Depth Standard’ in most or all of their subjects at KS3 and at Grades 7-9 or Distinction Level at KS4.

In The Classroom

High Prior Attainers, and the more able, can expect to be challenged in their lessons, with high level activities intended to increase the depth and breadth of their understanding in all subjects. They will be expected to undertake ‘Challenge’ or ‘Subject Star’ activities in many lessons.

At Deptford Green school we recognise the importance of celebrating the achievements and successes in every subject. Students who are identified as most able in their classes will be awarded ‘Subject Star’ status and will be encouraged to help lead learning.

Pastoral Support

At Deptford Green School, we recognise that the most able students may have particular needs and care will be taken to ensure that they receive appropriate pastoral support. The Head of Year and Pastoral Leaders for each year will support in the academic mentoring, progress monitoring and wellbeing support of the students.

SEN student passports are shared across the school which identify interests, strengths and the needs of each student.

Outside The Classroom

Students are provided with a rich extra-curricular programme including reading groups, puzzle clubs, STEM challenges, a podcast group, University projects, entering debates and many more. Our school Library and Teams Subject Libraries are stocked with multi-subject HPA resources, including fiction and non-fiction books and research articles collated by our colleagues, for students to independently learn from.

Frequent contact is made with parents to highlight the work being done to support their child, provide a calendar of key (age related) dates and experiences available to their child.

We have an amazing Careers provision and Enrichment programme at Deptford Green School run by Ms Nembhard with many opportunities for enriching and academic focused learning. Some activities and events include Careers fair; University mentors for KS4 students; Latin lessons at Colfe’s; Duke of Edinburgh Award; Free music instrumental lessons for all KS3 students; Gut Girls project for the most able KS3 girls; Maths Challenge for KS3 and Further Maths GCSE for KS4. Visits to the universities are another highly enjoyable and inspirational aspect of the Careers provision which promotes higher education and informs on future careers.

We will be entering a cohort of our Most Able Year 10 students into the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), a GCSE-equivalent course similar to a university-style dissertation and viva. Students are taught skills that enable them to conduct research effectively, including searching for and evaluating sources.