A Nottinghamshire school for children with special educational needs has scooped a prestigious national award.

Kedleston’s Wings School Notts, based near Newark, supports children with special educational needs including autism and social, emotional and mental health challenges. The school’s innovative approach to physical activity saw it scoop the Outstanding Inclusive Practice award at the recently held Youth Sport Trust Conference 2025 Awards.

The school was named the winner for its role in using PE, sport and play to re-engage young people, many of whom face varying complex challenges, in their education outside of a mainstream setting.

When naming Wings School Notts as the award’s winner, The Youth Sport Trust said: “A proud Youth Sport Trust Lead Inclusion School, Wings School Notts are dedicated to fostering an inclusive and immersive learning environment for all students.

placeholder image — The Wings Notts Team With Their Award

“They educate children with a variety of different backgrounds and needs and therefore aimed to adopt a unique approach to physical education, school sports and physical activity in order to provide their young people with an improved and evidenced developmental experience.

“Significant changes have been made across their PE and school sport practices to support this vision, including implementing initiatives such as the Youth Sport Trust's My Personal Best and Inclusive Youth Leadership programmes which are led collaboratively by students and senior leadership.

“As a result of this, Wings School have since introduced daily health and well-being sessions, activity-based enrichments, uniform changes, dual national curriculums and the use of physical activity to aid regulation and de-escalation, and more. These initiatives have led to notable improvements for both students and staff, including an improved sense of belonging felt among the entire community, more young people are now regularly attending offsite sporting enrichments with trusted staff, and generally improved behaviour.

“The school has also achieved back-to-back School Games gold awards and one of their students, Ellie, even won Inspirational Inclusive Leader Award Winner at the Youth Sport Trust 2024 Changemaker awards.”

Judges further noted that Kedleston Group’s Wings School Notts champions inclusion across their community through the organisation of continual professional development (CPD) sessions, with topics on neurodiversity, Motor Activity Training Programmes (MATP), sensory circuits and inclusive leadership being delivered to over 350 colleagues.

The award is the latest in a line of successes for the school, which was last year named as a Centre of Excellence by the Leadership Skills Foundation, one of only 17 centres achieving this prestigious accreditation, in the country.