Ben Brook, November 2025
The final report by the Government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review, led by Professor Becky Francis, has been published. Alongside this, the Government has provided a response document detailing plans to take the report’s recommendations and put them into practice. It has been recognised (in both the report and the response) that enrichment, especially via extra-curricular activity, should form a core component of a “curriculum rich in knowledge and broad in scope”.
This article will look at the key points raised in the report and identify how these will be put into practice from the Government’s response. It will explain how Avalon can help schools and colleges enhance their enrichment offering and ensure compliance with the new guidelines in a simple, manageable and cost-effective manner.
Key Points in the Report
In producing the report, the authors sought to be “mindful of the importance of the school curriculum beyond the national curriculum, and the important things that schools and colleges provide for their students every day”. It raises enrichment activities, sports, performances, work experience and careers advice as being among many undertakings “that provide young people with transferable skills, develop confidence, and bring their learning to life”.
The report authors see it as “vital that schools and colleges are able to innovate and respond to local needs, and that teachers have the flexibility to extend the curriculum and draw out its relevance for the young people in their classrooms”.
The report recognises the importance of the national curriculum and its need to “(maintain) its position as an ambitious entitlement for all”. However, it goes on to suggest “schools must have space to go beyond it to provide innovative practice, locally tailored content, and enrichment activities that help to ensure young people thrive in education and later life”. In making its recommendation for national curriculum reform, the report authors also make clear they have “sought to make sure that the scale of the national curriculum does not prevent schools from providing enrichment activities”.
For post-16, the authors “heard many good examples of schools and colleges designing enrichment, employment and pastoral activities”. These were seen to “provide opportunities for learners to build confidence in core skills for employment such as communication, teamwork, and leadership”. However, the report also finds “these are not sufficiently widespread and that the attention to oracy is insufficient”.
Active participation in activities that encompass volunteering and community involvement (such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award) is seen to “serve multiple purposes, including complementing learners’ substantive qualifications, developing study and employability skills, and developing learners’ social and cultural capital”. The report recommends that the Government:
“Strengthens guidance for 16-19 study programmes to promote effective practice in delivering non-qualification activity and to clarify expectations about the types of activities that should be core to the enrichment offer. The focus should be on applied knowledge and transferable skills that will enable learners to step confidently into adulthood.”
The Government Response
The response document from the Government has engaged with the recommendations of the report, dedicating a section to enrichment. In her foreword, the RT Hon Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education, states that “enrichment … has for too long been the privilege of a lucky few (that) must now become the entitlement of a whole generation”. Elaborating, she states:
“A revitalised arts offer will spark their creativity. Access to sports, culture and nature will expand their horizons. Civic engagement will stretch their abilities beyond the classroom and prepare them for our democratic and inclusive society – not just speaking up and speaking out but listening to the voices of others too.”
The response outlines a commitment to “Provide an enrichment entitlement for every child”. This will be achieved by “(setting) out a new core enrichment offer that every school and college should provide for every one of their pupils, which delivers access to civic engagement; arts and culture; nature, outdoor and adventure; sport and physical activities; and developing wider life skills”.
For key stage 3 “School leaders should ensure that pupils in key stage 3 benefit from the full three years of the key stage, with a strong transition in place followed by time for breadth of experience, depth of learning and wider enrichment”.
It is intended that enrichment is woven into the core curriculum as well. “Pupils should readily have opportunities for academic enrichment that extends and challenges their boundaries and fuels their love of a subject, including competitions, events and Olympiads amongst groupings of local schools and at national and international level”. Noting the variety of existing opportunities, but that the choice available can make it difficult to choose an appropriate programme:
“There are also lots of academic enrichment and excellence programmes available, in the arts, science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, English and the humanities, but the offers are sometimes complex to navigate”.
Dealing with enrichment directly, it states “Evidence shows that extra-curricular enrichment participation is associated with higher educational achievement. … But the enrichment offer varies significantly from school to school”. In addition, the level of participation has been seen to vary: “Around one-third of secondary school children said they did not participate in any activities in the 2024/25 autumn term”.
To help improve uptake, the response indicates that the Government “will set out a new core enrichment offer that every school and college, in every community, should aim to provide for all children – beyond the statutory curriculum”.
Enrichment in Schools
This will be formalised under a set of Enrichment Benchmarks that all schools will be required to deliver under the following key categories:
- Civic engagement
- Arts and culture
- Nature, outdoor and adventure
- Sport and physical activities
- Developing wider life skills
Furthermore, these categories will be included in the new School Profiles to provide information about a school’s enrichment opportunities. In future, under Ofsted’s new inspection framework, this is intended to form part of a school’s personal development review. It is stated that enrichment benchmarks will be introduced when Ofsted updates its inspection toolkits next year.
The Government is keen to build a picture of the current enrichment offering against the enrichment benchmark categories, to “identify cold spots and direct support where it is needed most.” The support identified so far includes:
- Using PE and School Sport Partnerships, to expand opportunities for extra-curricular sport and physical activity.
- Continuing investment in music hubs.
- £22.5 million of new funding over three years to create a tailored enrichment offer in up to 400 schools.
- £132.5 million of Dormant Assets funding to support the provision of services, facilities, or opportunities to meet the needs of young people.
Enrichment in Colleges
For young people aged 16-19, the Government recognises “enrichment activity can help them prepare to shape their world and thrive at work. We expect that this will help them with the skills and confidence to navigate the world of work, including gaining and keeping employment.” To achieve this the Government sets out to take the enrichment framework for schools and “working with college leaders, we will extend this framework to further education settings.”
Overall, the Government intends “The principles set out in the framework will require schools and colleges to take a holistic, wholesale approach to prioritising enrichment; activity aligned with student preferences; and a greater emphasis on monitoring progress and outcomes.”
Avalon’s Response
We welcome the findings of the report, in relation to enrichment. The coverage dedicated to enrichment in the Government’s response indicates a positive step towards placing it as a core component of the overall curriculum. Schools and colleges will begin to consider the following key questions (if they haven’t done so already):
- Do we deliver a breadth of enrichment opportunities that encompass the five main categories of the Enrichment Benchmarks?
- Do we have data to support knowledge of the uptake of enrichment opportunities?
- Are some enrichment opportunities we already offer eligible for additional funding or other external support, to either improve their content or increase the availability to more students?
- Are students receiving the right amount of encouragement to take part in enrichment?
- Are disadvantaged students receiving sufficient support to take part in enrichment?
- Do we effectively monitor progress and associated outcomes in relation to enrichment?
What Can Schools and Colleges Do Now?
Schools and colleges do not need to wait to start a process of formalising their enrichment offering. Key to answering many of the questions above is high-quality data. This can be achieved by following a few simple steps:
- Curate a central list of all enrichment opportunities that take place in school or college. Try to categorise each opportunity with one or more Enrichment Benchmarks that apply.
- Keep up to date, accurate records of attendance at all enrichment activities.
- Use gathered attendance data as evidence of attendance for additional funding. It will sometimes be necessary to cross-reference this against MIS data where key data points (e.g. PP, FSM, EAL, SEND status) are to be included as well.
- Engage with students to discuss their enrichment interests. Plan schemes to reward students for attending a certain number of activities on a particular number of occasions. This will encourage participation and a sense of achievement. These rewards could be in the form of badges, certificates or monetary rewards suitable for the activity (e.g. book tokens for a book club).
- Use gathered attendance data, cross-referenced with MIS data of key data points (e.g. PP, FSM, EAL, SEND status) to ensure and confirm uptake by disadvantaged students. Identify those that require more support and encouragement.
- Use gathered attendance data, cross-referenced with additional student data (e.g. positive academic student outcomes/progress in assessments) to monitor and assess the relationship between enrichment activities and outcomes.
What Can Avalon Do to Help?
We will continue to work with our school and college partners (as well as external agencies) to ensure our enrichment management tools – Avalon Achieve® and Avalon Eventus® – meet any future revision to requirements, as set out by the DfE and Ofsted. We have already met a number of these requirements as follows:
Ensure all enrichment opportunities in school/college meet one of the five main categories set out in the Enrichment Benchmarks.
We already have the means to classify enrichment events in both products according to individual needs. From today, Avalon Achieve® and Avalon Eventus® will include the five Enrichment Benchmarks as standard in a new set of classifications that can be applied to activities. This will simplify the process of identifying any gaps in compliance, at an organisational level as well as by individual student.
Maintain data to support knowledge of enrichment opportunity uptake.
Both Avalon Achieve® and Avalon Eventus® provide event registers to easily track attendance at all enrichment activities that take place in the college or school.
Provide evidence of attendance at enrichment opportunities that depend on external funding.
Existing reporting functionality allows precise, effective reports that can be shared with external agencies as evidence of attendance. We will continue to work with our partner schools and colleges to develop reports that specifically meet the requirements outlined, as set out by the DfE and Ofsted.
Encourage students to take part in enrichment activities.
When students receive recognition of their achievements, they are encouraged to attend more activities. Avalon Achieve® includes features to track and identify students for recognition of their achievements in enrichment activities. Teachers and tutors can use this tracking data to prompt discussion with students and help identify additional opportunities they may be interested in.
Support disadvantaged students with access to enrichment.
Avalon Achieve® and Avalon Eventus® can leverage existing student data held in the MIS, using key data points such as PP, FSM, EAL and SEND status, to confirm disadvantaged students are accessing enrichment activities. Reporting by student, it is possible to identify those that require additional support.
Monitor progress and associated outcomes in relation to enrichment.
Reporting tools in both Avalon Achieve® and Avalon Eventus® combine enrichment data gathered alongside data from the MIS. This provides an enhanced view of individual student progress in enrichment. This can be cross-referenced with student outcome data in the MIS to monitor student progress in a holistic manner.
This is just a shortlist of how Avalon can help schools and colleges meet or exceed the requirements set out in the Government response. Our experience of working with our existing base of schools and colleges puts us in an ideal place to help advise your school or college, as you navigate Enrichment Benchmarks and the new curriculum framework for enrichment.