Ask any Year 4 teacher whether they differentiate, and the answer is invariably yes. Ask them how, and the answers diverge wildly: three colour-coded worksheets, ability tables, extension tasks for the "top" group. Differentiation in teaching has been part of UK classroom practice for decades, but what it actually means, and whether the dominant approaches achieve anything useful, has rarely been interrogated clearly.
The answer, based on the available research and current Ofsted expectations, is nuanced. The old model of differentiation — pre-planned, resource-heavy, ability-segregated — has real limitations. A newer approach, increasingly called adaptive teaching, holds more promise for Key Stage 2 pupils. The distinction matters for every teacher in England, and understanding it is now woven into the Early Career Framework (ECF) that shapes how all new teachers are trained.
What Does Differentiation Look Like in the Modern UK Classroom?
For most of the 2000s and 2010s, differentiation in UK primary schools meant one thing in practice: tiered worksheets. The teacher prepared three versions of a task, labelled by ability (often with barely concealed coding like stars, circles, and triangles), and pupils worked through whichever version corresponded to their group. It was structured, visible, and auditable — qualities that made it easy to evidence for inspections.
The problem was that this model conflated preparation with responsiveness. A teacher who had produced three worksheets at 10pm the previous night had differentiated; a teacher who had spotted mid-lesson that six pupils had misunderstood a concept and regrouped them on the spot had not — at least not in a way that left an obvious paper trail.
Ofsted has shifted its position substantially. Current inspection frameworks evaluate whether teachers adapt their teaching in real time, not whether they have produced multiple pre-prepared resources. The inspectorate is looking for evidence that teachers understand what pupils know, identify misconceptions as they arise, and adjust accordingly.
The ECF, published in 2019 and updated since, goes further. It removes the word "differentiation" almost entirely and replaces it with "adaptive teaching," which it defines as responding to the needs of all pupils while maintaining high expectations for every learner. Teachers in England are still legally required under the Teachers' Standards to differentiate appropriately, but the dominant professional discourse has moved on from the three-worksheet model.
The ECF defines adaptive teaching as adjusting instruction based on ongoing assessment of what pupils know and can do — not pre-categorising pupils into fixed ability tracks before the lesson begins.
The Four Pillars of Differentiated Instruction
Carol Ann Tomlinson at the University of Virginia, whose work on differentiated instruction has influenced teacher training internationally, identifies four dimensions along which teachers can adapt their practice: content, process, product, and learning environment. These remain the most coherent framework available, and they map well onto KS2 classroom reality.
Content refers to what pupils learn or how they access it. In a Year 5 maths lesson on fractions, all pupils work toward the same learning objective; but some access it through concrete manipulatives (fraction tiles, folded paper), while others move directly to abstract notation. The content goal is identical; the entry point differs.
Process describes the activities pupils use to make sense of content. Flexible grouping falls here: rather than fixed ability tables, the teacher groups pupils by current understanding of a specific concept, changes those groups as understanding develops, and uses questioning pitched at different levels of cognitive demand within the same class discussion.
Product is how pupils demonstrate their learning. A KS2 English unit on persuasive writing might allow some pupils to produce a written letter, others a structured spoken argument, and others an annotated plan. All three require understanding of persuasive techniques; they differ in the mode of expression.
Learning environment covers pace, physical space, and the emotional climate of the classroom. Some pupils need more processing time; others benefit from brief paired discussion before contributing publicly. These adjustments do not require separate resources.
The critical point Tomlinson makes is that differentiation is not about giving some pupils less demanding work. Every adaptation should keep cognitive demand high while varying the support structure around it.
9 Strategies for Effective Adaptive Teaching
The following strategies are grounded in what works in KS2 classrooms within the constraints of the National Curriculum. They are listed in roughly ascending order of planning complexity.
1. Tiered Questioning
Ask questions at different levels of abstraction to the same class at the same time. "What is 3/4 of 24?" is a recall question. "How do you know?" is an explanation question. "Can you show me two different methods?" is an application question. No separate worksheet required.
2. Think-Pair-Share With Targeted Cold Calling
Giving pupils processing time before asking them to respond allows lower-confidence learners to formulate answers. Cold-calling specific pupils (rather than waiting for volunteers) lets the teacher gather data on understanding across the whole class, not just the most vocal third.
3. Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) Sequencing
Borrowed from mathematics mastery, CPA applies broadly. All pupils begin with concrete representations (physical objects, images), move to pictorial models, then to abstract notation. Pupils who need more time at the concrete stage get it; pupils who are ready move on. The sequence is the same for everyone.
4. Scaffolded Writing Frames
A writing frame is not a simplified task: it is a temporary structure that supports access to a cognitively demanding one. The expectation remains that pupils produce a persuasive argument or an analytical paragraph. The scaffold reduces the memory load involved in managing genre conventions simultaneously.
5. Flexible Grouping
Group pupils by current understanding of the specific concept being taught, not by general ability. Change groups when understanding changes. Research by Jo Boaler at Stanford University suggests that fixed ability grouping in primary school depresses attainment for pupils placed in lower groups without meaningfully raising it for those in higher groups.
6. Exit Tickets as Formative Assessment
A brief written response at the end of a lesson — two sentences, a worked problem, a labelled diagram — gives the teacher real-time data on who understood and who did not. This informs the following day's groupings and the teacher's opening question sequence, without requiring separate lesson plans.
Sort exit tickets into three piles: secure, developing, and needs reteaching. The next lesson opens with a brief reteach for the third group while the others apply their understanding to a new problem. This takes ten minutes of planning, not three hours.
7. Manipulatives and Visual Representations
For KS2 maths, access to physical manipulatives (Cuisenaire rods, base-ten blocks, fraction walls) is not remedial support. Research from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) shows consistent positive effects from the use of concrete manipulatives across primary mathematics, particularly for pupils who are not yet secure in abstract reasoning.
8. Reading Aloud and Text Access Strategies
In subjects where reading demand is high (history, science, geography), vocabulary pre-teaching and paired reading allow pupils with weaker decoding skills to access rich subject content. The barrier is decoding, not comprehension or thinking capacity; addressing the barrier at its source maintains access to grade-level material.
9. Task Variation Within Shared Objectives
Design tasks with multiple entry points that all converge on the same learning goal. In a Year 6 PSHE unit, a prompt might be: "Write a sentence, then a paragraph, then a page — stop when you've said what you want to say." The ceiling is removed; the floor is supported; the objective is the same.
Supporting SEND and EAL Pupils Through Differentiation
The move toward whole-class mastery teaching has produced genuine gains in mathematics attainment at KS2. It has also produced a legitimate concern, raised by SEND specialists and researchers alike: that the emphasis on class-wide progress can obscure the specific and legally protected needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
Adaptive teaching, done well, is not at odds with SEND provision. But it does require that teachers know their pupils' specific barriers to learning, not just their general ability levels. A pupil with dyslexia and a pupil with dyscalculia face entirely different barriers; the adaptation that helps one may be irrelevant to the other.
For SEND pupils, the most effective adaptations are those built into the lesson's core structure, rather than added as a separate task. This is the principle behind Universal Design for Learning (UDL), developed by David Rose and Anne Meyer at CAST. UDL asks teachers to anticipate barriers and remove them during planning, rather than retrofitting support after the fact.
For EAL pupils, the evidence points clearly toward vocabulary instruction and structured opportunities to produce language. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan's Tier 2 vocabulary framework (words like "significant," "predict," or "justify" that appear across subjects but are not taught explicitly in any single one) is particularly relevant. EAL pupils often have strong subject knowledge but lack access to the academic register; targeted vocabulary teaching closes that gap faster than simplified tasks.
Whole-class adaptive teaching cannot substitute for targeted SEND provision, EHCP implementation, or specialist support. The two should work in tandem. If mastery teaching is being used to reduce TA time or delay SEND referrals, that is a resource decision, not a pedagogical one.
Using Ed-Tech to Streamline the Process
One honest criticism of differentiation in teaching has always been the workload it generates. Three worksheets per lesson, five lessons per day, five days per week: the arithmetic is brutal, and it has contributed directly to the burnout pressures facing UK teachers. RAND researchers found that teachers in comparable professions work significantly more hours per week, and that perception of unmanageable workload is the primary driver of attrition among early career staff.
Ed-tech offers a partial solution here, specifically for the resource-generation and progress-tracking components of adaptive teaching. AI-powered lesson planning tools can generate tiered task variations, produce vocabulary pre-teaching lists, and create scaffolded writing frames in minutes rather than hours. The teacher's professional judgment remains essential — no tool decides what a class needs — but the mechanical production of resources can be substantially reduced.
Platforms built for KS2 assessment tracking can aggregate exit-ticket data and flag pupils who have not demonstrated secure understanding of a specific objective, allowing the teacher to see at a glance where reteaching is needed before the next lesson. This is precisely the kind of real-time responsiveness that Ofsted is looking for, and it does not require a separate planning session.
The caveat is straightforward: tools that generate resources are only useful if the teacher knows what kind of resource to generate. Adaptive teaching remains a professional skill. Ed-tech reduces the production burden; it does not replace the expertise needed to diagnose what a pupil needs and why.
What This Means for Your Practice
Differentiation in teaching has not been abandoned in UK schools. The evidence base for tailoring instruction to pupil needs remains strong. What has changed is the model of how that tailoring should happen.
The three-worksheet approach, however well-intentioned, created workload, reinforced fixed ability expectations, and gave Ofsted something to tick rather than something to evaluate. Adaptive teaching asks instead: do you know what your pupils understand right now, and are you adjusting what happens next based on that knowledge?
For KS2 teachers, the practical shift is smaller than the rhetorical one. Use tiered questioning, flexible grouping, exit tickets, and scaffolds that maintain rather than reduce cognitive demand. Build vocabulary support into lessons for EAL pupils. Ensure SEND provision is running alongside whole-class teaching, not being replaced by it.
The long-term evidence on whether replacing "differentiation" with "adaptive teaching" improves pupil outcomes is still developing. What the research does support clearly is that maintaining high expectations for all pupils, teaching responsively, and giving all learners access to rich content, rather than simplified versions of it, produces better results than the ability-tracked, resource-heavy model that preceded it.
That is not a revolutionary conclusion. But in a system where the three-worksheet model persisted for two decades despite limited evidence for its effectiveness, it is a necessary one.
