Park Academy Achieves IQM Inclusive School Award with Centre of Excellence Status

August 17, 2026

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Congratulations to Park Academy on achieving the IQM Inclusive School Award with Centre of Excellence Status. This fantastic achievement reflects the academy’s commitment to inclusion, ensuring every child is valued, supported, and empowered to succeed.

Inclusion in Action

At Park Academy, inclusion is not an initiative or an add-on; it is the heartbeat of the community. The whole academy charter ‘Ready, Kind, Safe’ is more than a mantra displayed on walls. It is lived, spoken and modelled every single day. Children talk confidently about what it means to be ready to learn and to listen, to be kind in recognising and valuing difference, and to ensure that everyone feels safe, emotionally as well as physically. These shared values shape the way they speak to one another, how they resolve conflict, how they celebrate success and how they welcome difference.

Vision That Delivers

Leadership at Park Academy is rooted in clarity, collaboration and moral purpose. Leaders and trustees share a clear and ambitious vision for the academy, one that has been developed alongside staff and is firmly grounded in a careful evaluation of the community the school serves. Improvement planning is sharply focused on identified priorities and is responsive to emerging need. As noted in the June 2025 Ofsted inspection, “Trustees and academy leaders share a clear and ambitious vision for the academy. There are effective processes in place to make sure that improvement planning focuses on the priority areas.” This alignment between vision and action ensures that inclusion is not aspirational but operational.

Learning Without Limits

At Park Academy, the curriculum is thoughtfully designed to ensure that every child is engaged, included and able to succeed. Leaders have created an ambitious, carefully sequenced curriculum in which knowledge, skills and vocabulary are mapped progressively over time. Vocabulary in particular is the golden thread that runs through every subject. Leaders have identified the precise words they want pupils to know and use as they move through the academy, recognising that many children speak English as an additional language or come from homes where vocabulary exposure may be limited. Key vocabulary is explicitly taught, revisited and proudly displayed in classrooms and corridors, empowering pupils to articulate their thinking with confidence.

Broadening Horizons

Park Academy offers a wide range of enrichment opportunities to broaden horizons and build aspirations. The Park Pathway programme, careers events for Years 5 and 6, visiting professionals and an extensive extra-curricular offer support pupils in exploring future possibilities. Attendance at clubs is carefully tracked to ensure equity of access, and successful clubs are repeated. Pupils report increased confidence in trying new activities and value the opportunity to spend time with friends. In some cases, engagement in academy clubs has inspired families to access similar activities in the community, including martial arts, football, kickboxing and skateboarding.

Success for Every Child

Park Academy stands out as a school where inclusive values are operationalised through strong leadership, thoughtful systems and compassionate relationships. The academy successfully combines high expectations with deep understanding of its context, ensuring that vulnerability does not limit aspiration. It is a school where diversity is celebrated, barriers are addressed proactively, and every child is genuinely seen, supported and enabled to succeed.

Find Out More About IQM

The Inclusion Quality Mark provides schools with a nationally recognised framework for developing and celebrating inclusive practice.

If your school is interested in achieving the IQM Inclusive School Award, contact the IQM team on 028 7127 7857 or email admin@iqmaward.com.

To find out more about IQM and request a free information pack, visit www.iqmaward.com.