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The launch of our 2025 Talk ÍÑ¿ã°É Awards for Innovation in ÍÑ¿ã°É is just around the corner, so make sure you keep an eye on our website and social media channels over the coming weeks. We’ll be bringing you everything that schools need to know about how to enter, the lowdown on this year’s categories and information on how our crack team of researchers, informers and educational experts spend the summer locked away to whittle down the entries, pick our shortlist and crown our winners.

Our awards set out to reward those who are forging boldly ahead with new, revolutionary ideas that are changing the face of independent education – and we want to sing the praises of schools who are doing inspiring work, whether that’s pioneering mental-health initiatives or immersive learning experiences. To help schools feel inspired, we’ve put our 2024 winners back under the spotlight to show why their awards were so well deserved, and what they’ve been up to since taking the top spot.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Emanuel School, London 

Last year we recognised Emanuel’s huge strides in refocusing the historical lens onto women and the black community. Last year, the school’s Athena Society launched a journal, inspired by student research, of historical stories that feature female protagonists, which went on to win the Bold Voices award. Since then, Laura Aitken-Burt, who runs the society and teaches classics, history and politics at the school, has liaised with other history teachers and collected data on the paucity of female figures studied at GCSE and A-level, which will be presented to a government curriculum review. We’re beyond inspired by the work she and the pupils continue to do to try and end history sexism in schools. Emanuel is equally active when it comes to promoting black history. In October 2024, the school’s Archer Group (named after the first black mayor of Battersea) curated a Black History Month, organising numerous articles and events, including life-education lessons based on film director Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series of films, and a podcast in partnership with the African Caribbean ÍÑ¿ã°É Network and members of its Young People Advisory Group.
 

Support for Life Beyond School: Malvern College, Worcestershire, and Godolphin, Wiltshire

There’s been no resting on its laurels for Malvern College since winning its TE award. Indeed, the school tells us that the accolade has served as a catalyst to expand and enrich the support it offers even further. Over the past year, it has grown its network of external professionals, and pupils now benefit from an even broader range of real-world experiences, including finance and banking workshops, media and survival skills, practical car-maintenance sessions, self-defence classes and even barista training to train for summer jobs. ‘This hands-on learning enhances academic mentoring, ensuring our pupils leave Malvern as confident, capable and well-rounded individuals,’ says the school. It has also opened a transformative new sixth-form centre that mirrors a university-style learning environment to foster independent research, collaborative teamwork and self-directed learning.



Joint winner Godolphin has also been busy growing its support beyond school. Find Your Future Friday has seen guest speakers, including a mental-health practitioner, a criminal psychologist, journalists, police and a lecturer from the Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III expand pupils’ horizons. Several alumnae returned to the school to take part in its Bright Futures in Science & Technology event too. They’ve ended up in exciting careers, from Formula 1 engineering to Google digital marketing, and it says a lot about the gratitude they have for their school that they want to inspire the pupils coming after them. As the school says: ‘Their guidance helps bridge the gap between education and the professional world, ensuring that every Godolphin student is well equipped to take their next steps with confidence.’



Pastoral Care and Wellbeing: Queen Anne’s Caversham, Berkshire

The Weekly Wellbeing Check-In, the school’s ground-breaking mental-health initiative, shone out when it came to choosing our winner in this category. A comprehensive questionnaire that pupils fill out every Monday, this proactive measure helps assess every child’s physical, mental and overall wellbeing with targeted questions about sleep, nutrition, exercise and weekly challenges – and now Queen Anne’s Caversham has further boosted its data collection with the aid of AI. The analysis is even more in-depth as a result, opening the door for even more targeted interventions. ‘It allows us to respond more effectively to student needs,’ says the school, which closely monitors each individual’s scores, trends and fluctuations, allowing for a highly personalised approach and informed, data-driven decision-making. The initiative saw more than 200 proactive engagements with pupils in its first year, highlighting nascent issues that would otherwise not have been picked up. Such early intervention can make a real difference to mental health, and prioritising it creates a wonderful environment of empathy, mutual respect and inclusiveness. And the initiative now has a second gong – it recently won the HIEDA Clinical Excellence: Practice Change Implementation award, impressing the judges with its commitment to supporting pupils’ mental health. 



Bursary Provision: Radley College, Oxfordshire

This year alone, 128 Radley boys receive funding, with 25 pupils on fully funded places, continuing the upward trajectory of the school’s inclusivity drive. What particularly caught our eye was the Keys Award, an all-inclusive scholarship programme for talented and ambitious state-educated pupils. This year, the school has offered five 11+ and five 16+ Keys Awards to outstanding boys. ‘I always wanted to go to a place that could enrich me,’ says Shaurya, who joined the school in September. ‘Before Radley, I constantly felt like I wasn’t given enough educational, co-curricular or sporting opportunities.’ Other award-holders include Moses, whose guitar quartet made the finals of the U19 ProCorda National Chamber Music Competition, and Uzair who is heading off to Dallas to compete in the VEX Robotics World Championships. The past year has also seen the launch of Bright Ideas, a competition celebrating creativity for local primary-school children in the area. ‘We want to discover talent within our local communities in Oxfordshire, and create awareness around the College’s funded-places scheme,’ the school tells us.



Thinking beyond the Curriculum: Tanglin Trust School, Singapore

It doesn’t get more beyond the curriculum than Tanglin Trust’s pioneering Highlands Programme, which has just seen Year 9 pupils satellited to the school’s rural Gippsland campus in Australia to spend five weeks in the natural environment doing fieldwork studies, exploring local history and geography, and taking part in outward-bound activities. Intellectual curiosity, environmental wonder and community living are all at the heart of this immersive scheme, and during their time there, the Year 9s will develop resilience, leadership and teamwork through navigating challenges together. Before the pupils flew off, they took part in workshops, talks and taster sessions, learning essential skills such as pitching tents and building up their physical endurance. Meanwhile, head of campus Mark Cutchie was busy readying the new site, a 15-acre campus in a stunning Alpine-style environment. ‘Profound learning happens when young minds actively engage with the world around them,’ the school says, and we couldn’t agree more.



Community Engagement or Charity Fundraising: King’s College School Wimbledon, London

Engagement with the community is no recent add-on at King’s – for 30 years, the school has worked with local groups, schools and charities to run a dizzying number of initiatives in the area, from Friendship Hour, when pupils take tea with the elderly residents at a nearby care home, to the collaboration with colleagues at 33 locally maintained primary, secondary and special schools and sixth-form colleges. Indeed, the partnership between King’s and Harris Academy led to the development of the latter’s sixth-form offering, and pupils and staff from both schools now work together, benefiting from joint academic extension, university preparation and community projects. King’s fundraising endeavours are also impressive. Last October’s Make A Difference Day saw pupils and staff donating the equivalent of 1,286 meals in a food-drive campaign for City Harvest, a local charity that delivers nutritious food to Londoners in need.



Best Use of Technology: King’s InterHigh

This fully online school is as tech-savvy as they come, with 20 years’ experience of delivering a superb digital education to pupils all over the world. And its use of technology goes far beyond the virtual school platform and digital classrooms. ‘Technology can be used to help students with special educational needs learn at their own pace, create more immersive and exciting lessons, support teachers, boost grades and more,’ the school says. Since winning its TE award last year, it’s been forging ahead with edtech integration, in particular virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The International Baccalaureate programme now has VR fully embedded, with each subject featuring two lessons a term that are taught through VR headsets. And the school has also used the technology to construct virtual playgrounds, meaning pupils can meet each other on the International Space Station, in ancient Egypt and among dinosaurs. AI, meanwhile, allows supplementary learning activities to be tailored to each pupil according to their pace and progress. The school took part in a pilot programme related to exactly this, that showed pupil outcomes went up by an entire grade boundary.



Performing and Creative Arts: Truro School, Cornwall

Winning the award for its exemplary arts offering couldn’t have come at a more serendipitous time for Truro School, which was just launching its Year of Creativity. This has seen pupils taking part in and producing a record number of performing and creative events, including major productions of Les Misérables, Chicago, the pupil-written Crossroads and an all-singing, all-dancing summer festival. The school believes the arts have the power to inspire and enrich lives, not just for its own pupils but the wider community too. It partners with the Cornwall Music Services Trust and plays a role in educating Truro Cathedral’s nationally acclaimed choristers. Head Andy Johnson tells us the award was a proud moment for them all, and the school is looking forward to being able to offer its pupils a brand new, state-of-the-art music centre in the near future, which, of course, will be opening up to provide creative opportunities to the wider community.



Environmental Achievement: Ardingly College, Sussex

We awarded Ardingly College our prize for environmental achievement for its inspirational solar-car project, which started life back in 2019 when pupils designed and built their first such vehicle and raced it across Australia. Since then, they’ve designed a STEM double-decker bus in partnership with local sixth-form college Ifield Community College and a solar-powered, off-road SUV, which has been nominated for the global Earthshot Prize endorsed by the Prince of Wales. None of this could have happened without the incredible knowledge and energy of Dr Andrew Spiers MBE, who has recently retired (with a clutch of awards to his name). But while there’s been a bit of a hiatus on the solar-car project, the school has been busy putting on its most sustainable-ever drama production, The Little Mermaid, with aim of making the costumes, props and sets out of recycled materials (pupils have been busy in their art and D&T lessons), and donating all the proceeds to the Brighton branch of the Surfers Against Sewage charity.



Entrepreneurship and Business: Pembridge Hall School, London

Since winning our entrepreneurship and business award, there’s been no let-up in Pembridge Hall’s dedication to opening girls’ horizons through innovative learning experiences. The past year has seen the launch of its immersive TED weeks, where pupils from Years 3 to 6 work collaboratively in small groups focusing on one of the United Nations’ sustainability goals. These see the girls designing products, building prototypes, analysing financial aspects, creating marketing strategies and developing presentation skills. They then present to a panel of ‘Dragons’ to try to persuade one to invest. A new Girls of the Future project also seeks to embed entrepreneurship in pupils’ education, with parents creating mini videos to share insights into their own professions. ‘These projects not only nurture entrepreneurial skills but also instil core values, preparing pupils for future success in a supportive and collaborative environment,’ Pembridge Hall tells us.



Innovation in Nutrition or Food: St George’s Ascot, Berkshire

‘We want every meal to be nutritious, tasty and something pupils (and staff!) genuinely look forward to,’ says St George’s Ascot’s domestic bursar – and since winning the TE award last year, the school hasn’t slowed down in its commitment to great food, sustainability and pupil wellbeing. It has created a specially designed dining space for neurodiverse pupils so they can enjoy quieter mealtimes; it has continued to reduce food waste and use local suppliers and seasonal ingredients; and it is currently gearing up to support the new Performance Swimming Programme launching in September. ‘Our catering team will play a key role in fuelling our budding athletes with meal plans that focus on their nutritional needs,’ the school tells us. ‘We’ll also be working closely with performance coaches to teach our swimmers how good nutrition can help them best their personal times – a perfect next step for our award-winning food-education approach.’ It’s clear St George’s Ascot is still leading the way in school dining, plate after plate. 



Inspiring Sporting Activities: Bede’s School, Sussex

A school that prides itself on shaping to pupils’ needs rather than the other way round, Bede’s won our Inspiring Sporting Activities Award for just that. Pupils here are bursting with sporting talent, and Bede’s goes above and beyond to help them achieve their dreams. Several girls as well as boys have signed professional cricketing contracts and represented England and the West Indies; two pupils walked away with Tennis Sussex Awards; alumna Lola Brown has signed a three-year professional contract with Chelsea FC and represented England U17 in the U17 FIFA Women’s World Cup; and the boys’ relay swim team finished fifth in the National Swimming Super League. It’s breathtaking stuff, and the achievements are the pinnacle of year-round academy and training programmes, which Bede’s was one of the first schools to offer. And it’s not just elite pathways that it is so skilled at delivering. As director of sport David Byrne tells us: ‘It’s really important to me that pupils who don’t perceive themselves to be sporty feel that our sports centre is somewhere they belong. Empowering them to make choices – including non-competitive sports – helps them remain positive about sport rather than resent it.’ 



The Alice Rose Award: Hazlegrove Prep School, Somerset, and Pinewood School, Wiltshire 

The Alice Rose Award is a particularly special one and is very close to our heart. It was created in memory of our incredible co-founder Alice, whose brilliant vision, positivity and inspiration remain at the heart of everything we do here at Talk ÍÑ¿ã°É. 

In honour of Alice, we chose two schools that treasure the experience of childhood, schools where growth and learning happen alongside playing and exploring outdoors. Our two winners – Hazlegrove and Pinewood – were chosen by the whole TE team, as well as Alice’s husband James and their three boys. 

‘As a school that emphasises prolonging childhood and celebrating the joys of being in the fresh air, spending time together, allowing children to play and not using mobile phones, it was gratifying to have these values recognised,’ says head of Hazlegrove Ed Benbow. ‘Since receiving the award, our family-focused life here has continued to thrive. This year we have launched several environmental initiatives, including being awarded the prestigious Green Flag Award, installing a biomass boiler to power the swimming pool and working on an exciting garden project in conjunction with the fantastic team at Higher Farm, Somerset, who run a regenerative food and farming business.’ 



Pinewood School head Neal Bailey also tells us what an honour it was to receive the Alice Rose Award. ‘Alice’s belief in the importance of childhood, the joy of learning and the value of a nurturing school environment is something we hold close to our hearts. To be recognised as a school that reflects her values was a truly humbling and meaningful moment for us. At Pinewood, we strive every day to create an environment where children feel safe, supported and inspired, a place where they can subconsciously grow in confidence, develop curiosity and build friendships that will last a lifetime. We believe it is so important for children to embrace the wonders of learning, and we are immensely proud to foster a school community where every child is valued and encouraged to reach their full potential.’  



Our Talk ÍÑ¿ã°É Awards for Innovation in ÍÑ¿ã°É 2025 will be launching soon… Watch this space!