The Hub School achieves IQM Centre of Excellence Status

September 14, 2026

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The Hub School has been awarded the IQM Centre of Excellence Award, recognising their commitment to creating a safe, inclusive and relationship-centred environment where every student is understood, respected and supported to thrive.

Relationships are the bedrock of the school

The Hub provides specialist support for students with social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) needs, offering an alternative educational experience rooted in nurture, compassion and care with a staff team who have high aspirations for each of their students.

It was easy to see the positive individual relationships that each member of staff has with each child. Every student had a lovely warm welcome with a personal address by each member of staff. The Senior Leaders are very clear that by establishing and maintaining positive, respectful and trusting relationships between staff and students, families and all external agencies and visitors, they are the foundations for everyone to then build upon, as each student moves along their holistic learning journey.

The sense of belonging, feeling safe and included, permeates through the walls of this school, so that everyone is a part of this authentic family friendly school. As the Head of School pointed out: “at the heart of our school, is the deep belief in the power of relationships, relational practice shapes our teaching, support systems and everyday routines, fostering trust, connections and positive behaviour, while creating a strong sense of community and care.”

A culture of nurture, consistency and inclusion

The school’s values of Respect, Responsibility, Relationships & Resilience (4Rs), are evident from the first few steps into the main site of this school. The staff and students ensure that “the educational experience is built on nurture, structure and consistency, where every student is understood, respected and supported to thrive.”

All staff are united as they all contribute to and are consistent in using a range of strategies, interventions and routines of the school, especially in the classroom. There is a very clear teaching and learning pedagogy that enables teachers to teach and the students to learn to the best of their abilities.

The school has invested in regulation spaces where the students can have ‘open privacy’ to self-deescalate/self-regulate. There are sensory rooms and a Cubbie, as well as a large area of the school dedicated to student Wellbeing with smaller rooms for increased privacy. All these spaces are used throughout the day when needed by the students and at times as part of their bespoke timetable as each student becomes more independent and self-regulatory.

Adaptive teaching supports every learner

The curriculum over all the sites is well designed and supports academic achievement at the end of KS 2, 3 and 4, where numerous nationally recognised qualifications at different levels can be attained.

Adaptations are readily made for each student to access the curriculum each lesson. This is achieved easily, as the staff are very well qualified and experienced in their subject area and really know each of their students and how they prefer to learn, be approached, start an activity from etc. Therefore, the student’s confidence increases, it builds up their self-esteem and they can become more independent learners.

Senior Leaders have introduced ‘Relational Routines’ that occur in lessons, outside the classroom, at breaks etc. In lessons, there is always a ‘strong start’ and an overview of the lesson in terms of ‘Now, Next & Then’ with a ‘big question’ and a link to British Values; then a ‘Calm Conclusion’ to end the lesson.

The staff have a range of resources that are used to enable the students to access the learning from different starting points and make the learning as practical as possible, as many are kinaesthetic learners. The teachers undertake live marking and throughout each lesson quality accurate questioning. The classroom staff give quality verbal and written feedback to each student which helps them plan for future next steps learning.

Building confidence beyond the classroom

The school aims to promote social and emotional wellbeing through a rich and varied personal development curriculum that is embedded in everything that they do that supports their developing life skills, increasing their resilience and understanding how to make and sustain healthy positive relationships.

The students have access to the wellbeing hub in school that is designed to offer many therapeutic programmes that are designed to support, guide and empower the student to be able to re-engage with education, rebuilding their confidence, trust in people, and showing them different ways in which to become independent young people who reach their academic and social potential.

As part of their personalised timetables, the students are encouraged to engage in the sensory rooms and the sensory Cubbie. The students like their teachers: “they help me and I now want to learn”. They fully recognise that they have lots of opportunities to learn in different ways and really like their rewards system which is based on the 4 core values of Respect, Responsibility, Resilience and Relationships and Attitude to Learning.

Working in partnership with families and the wider community

The staff at The Hub work very closely with all their families. Once the referral has been made and accepted to attend this SEMH based school, parents/carers are immediately involved in their child’s education journey. Induction meetings are held with the child, parents/carers, external agencies if present in the child/family’s lives and key staff from The Hub.

Each child’s parents/carers are contacted by phone at least once a week by their classroom staff to share progress, highlight achievements and generally update them on what calendared events will happen the following week, so that each student has some ‘lead-in time’ to any changes to their normal working routines.

The Hub also actively seeks, establishes and maintains strong working relationships with its local and wider communities. Its curriculum includes an off-site KS3 outreach programme and an extensive Vocational Outreach programme, offering students opportunities to engage in vocational learning alongside English and Maths, careers guidance, pastoral support and personal social development.

The school’s most recent careers day was extremely well planned, with a carousel of quality interactive career-based activities. It enabled the students to begin to understand the roles and responsibilities of different jobs, how to become trained to undertake them and to aspire to different types of jobs that are local and required nationally/internationally.

Find Out More About IQM

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.