How to Extend Your Most Able Pupils With Targeted Online Support

Provision is usually framed as catch-up. Beauchamp has used it the other way — to stretch, and to sharpen exam performance.

A Purple Ruler operational case study — written so another school can repeat it

Alternative provision carries a catch-up reputation, and able pupils who are coasting rarely qualify for it. So the pupils with the most headroom — the ones who could be pushed to a top grade — often get the least targeted support.

650+

lessons in 18 months

pupils

stretch + exam

the focus

The approach

Beauchamp has flipped the model. Over eighteen months it has delivered more than 650 lessons — mostly stretch and exam support, alongside some alternative provision — for eighteen pupils, using online provision to extend its most able rather than only to rescue its most behind.

Programme mix & where next

Online Academy✓ In-School Alternative ProvisionOne-to-One Support · next →✓ Stretch & Exam Support

The challenge in context

Stretch is the quietest gap in most schools. Resources flow, rightly, to pupils at risk; the able-but-coasting are left to coast. Targeted online stretch and exam support is a low-cost way to close that gap without diverting in-school capacity.

Eighteen pupils, eighteen months, a positive response — a model other schools rarely think to copy.

“The response from your students has been positive.”

Purple Ruler partnership record, Beauchamp College

The playbook — how to run it yourself

1Use online provision to stretch, not only to rescue — target the able-but-coasting.
2Focus stretch sessions on exam technique and the hardest content, one cohort at a time.
3Run it alongside AP so the same partnership serves both ends of the range.
4Measure it by grades gained at the top, not just gaps closed at the bottom.

The lesson for ambitious schools: provision is not only for catch-up. Point targeted online stretch at your most able, and you close the gap nobody else is funding.

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DRAFT — confidential. Pupil names have been changed. Not for publication until approved by the school.