An enduring educational dilemma is that young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds do not have their needs met in conventional schooling. As a result, many have left school by Year 11. To counter this trend, some schools in disadvantaged areas introduce targeted in-school interventions before Year 11 to meet the needs of their students. Many of these interventions, which are highly successful in engaging students and supporting them to achieve, have insights to offer schools, but they remain on the margins as programmes for particular young people. However, a government secondary school in Victoria, Australia has been an exception. It was inspired to apply aspects of a successful intervention, Hands On Learning, to a whole-school initiative to enhance the engagement of all of its students. I used a case-study approach to investigate the initiative's first year of implementation. Findings revealed that the majority of students did report engagement. However, economically disadvantaged students faced barriers to full participation that negatively impacted their learning experiences. The inequitable distribution of educational benefits demonstrated that whole-school adaptation of an intervention is not straightforward and unless the needs of disadvantaged students are targeted in the whole-school initiative, they are likely to experience educational disadvantage.