IWS Academy

The Well-Rounded Programme.

Success is not only what a child achieves. It is how fully they develop. At IWS Academy, whole-child development is built into the education, alongside academic learning rather than around it.

Meet our Mentors

Applies to AcademyEverything on this page describes Academy, the complete IWS school experience.

  • 12–15
    live lessons a week in Academy, depending on year group
  • Weekly
    one-to-one mentoring, every week of term
  • Unlimited
    one-to-one academic support
  • Houses and community events
  • Clubs and student leadership
  • Founders Programme
  • Work & Learn

We are the International Well-Rounded School.

Well-Rounded is not simply our name. It expresses what we believe education should do: develop capable young people academically, personally, and for the life they will lead beyond school.

Every child has strengths, challenges, interests, abilities, needs and untapped potential. And none of those stay fixed. That is why we do not reduce a child to a grade, a difficulty, a diagnosis, or even a talent.

That is the purpose of the IWS Well-Rounded Programme: to help each student understand themselves, develop their strengths, work through barriers, discover new capabilities, and realise more of their potential over time.

The Well-Rounded Programme

Applies to Academy

A curriculum for who a student is becoming.

The Well-Rounded Programme is our whole-child curriculum, running alongside the Cambridge curriculum, developing how students learn, respond to challenge, work with others, take responsibility and shape their own direction.

Every student on the Academy learning model has a Mentor, who is also one of their teachers. The Mentor holds a development conversation with the student every week of term. The student chooses two or three goals in their own words.

The school connects that student, by name, to real opportunities in which the capability they are developing is genuinely required. What the student actually did is recorded, dated and verified.

How it differs from provision a parent may already know

AspectTraditional pastoral careTraditional enrichmentThe Well-Rounded Programme
Who receives itStudents who need supportStudents who choose to joinEvery student on the Academy learning model
Its purposeTo stabilise the student, protect them, or remove a barrierParticipation and enjoymentDeliberate growth of the whole person
The question it asksWhat is wrong, or what is preventing progress?What would this student enjoy?What are this student’s strengths, and what should they develop next?
When it endsWhen the concern is resolvedWhen the student stops attendingWhen the student leaves the school

The goal is not simply better performance. It is more of a child’s potential becoming real.

We build one picture of the whole child.

No single assessment defines a young person. So the picture is built from four sources, and it keeps changing as the child does.

  • Academic baseline

    A Cambridge assessment, to place them where they actually are.

  • Wider assessment

    How they approach difficulty, work independently, and where confidence sits.

  • What you know

    A questionnaire from you. Parents hold what no test will produce.

  • What they say

    A conversation with the child, on their own.

One picture of one child, and it keeps developing

What happens when

  1. Week one

    Your child is assigned their Mentor, who becomes their person at the school and your point of contact.

  2. The first month

    The four sources come together into one plan: what they are strong at, what may be in the way, and their first goals, academic and personal, written in their own words.

  3. Every week, and every term

    Twenty minutes with their Mentor. Each term, goals reset, one real opportunity arranged, and a report to you about their development rather than their marks.

  4. Every year, until they leave

    A written portrait of who they are becoming, and steadily more of the review led by the child, until by Year 13 they present their own evidence.

Applies to Academy

One Mentor connects the picture.

Every Mentor is a qualified teacher, trained to deliver the Well-Rounded Programme. Not an administrator and not a wellbeing officer, but a teacher prepared for this particular work.

The Mentor holds your child’s whole picture: academic progress, personal development, what is happening beyond school, and what they are working towards. They speak with you. They gather what subject teachers are seeing. And they agree with your child what comes next.

When something needs to change, the Mentor is the person who makes it happen. They bring in academic support, personalised learning, pastoral care or an access adjustment, and follow it until it has landed.

One child

  1. Each terma conversation with you, and a new opportunity arranged
  2. Each fortnighttheir Personalised Learning Programme looked at again
  3. Every weekhouses, clubs, the thing they chose to do
  4. Every weektwenty minutes with their Mentor
  5. Most daystheir subject teachers, live in the lesson

Meet the Mentors.

Your child would have one of them for the whole of their time at the school.

  • Megan Nel, a Mentor and English and Maths teacher

    Megan Nel

    Mentor, and English and Maths teacher

  • Dennis Lukozi, a Mentor and Science and Computing teacher

    Dennis Lukozi

    Mentor, and Science and Computing teacher

  • Edward Eayrs, a Mentor and English teacher

    Edward Eayrs

    Mentor, and English teacher

  • Ruth Akintola, a Mentor and Global Perspectives teacher

    Ruth Akintola

    Mentor, and Global Perspectives teacher

Applies to Academy

Confidence, resilience and independence are developed by design.

No one becomes braver because an adult told them to be. So capacity here is built through a structure rather than left to chance: five areas of development, and a rotation that keeps any of them from being neglected.

Every meeting has the same shape

  1. How they are
  2. What happened with what they agreed last week
  3. The area they are developing
  4. One action they choose themselves
  5. A check on their academic work

It is the area of development that moves, not the shape of the meeting.

One school year · the same conversation, a different area of development each half-term

  1. Autumn 1Self
  2. Autumn 2Character
  3. Spring 1Others
  4. Spring 2Leadership and Voice
  5. Summer 1Future
  6. Summer 2The year reviewed

The five areas, each a question a child learns to ask about themselves

  • Self

    How do I understand, manage and develop myself?

  • Character

    How do I act when something is difficult, inconvenient, or unseen?

  • Others

    How do I relate to the people around me, and what do I give them?

  • Leadership and Voice

    How do I express myself, and how do I influence what happens around me?

  • Future

    How do I prepare for a world that will not stay still?

It is their development, so they lead it.

A programme done to a young person produces compliance and nothing else. So we test it with one question, asked of conversations we sit in on:

Did the student talk more than the adult?

How much they run, by age

Adult guidance

Student ownership

  1. Years 3 to 6

    They say what they enjoyed and what was hard, and choose between two opportunities offered to them. Their goal is written down in their own words.

  2. Years 7 to 9

    They name their own goal, in their own words, and rate themselves at the start of the year and again each term.

  3. Years 10 to 11

    They chair part of their own termly review, choose their own opportunity, and bring their own evidence to the table.

  4. Years 12 to 13

    They run the whole review and present their own evidence. The adult takes notes, challenges them, and signs it off.

Applies to Academy

Where it sits in the week.

A week at IWS Academy is mostly lessons. The Well-Rounded Programme adds about one hour to it: twenty minutes with a Mentor, and one block for something the student has chosen to do.

Lessons are taught live at times that suit the family’s own time zone, so the blocks are shown in order rather than by the clock.

A student in pink headphones and a cream jacket, working at a laptop at a round table
Well-Rounded Programme
Twenty minutes one-to-one with their Mentor, every week of term
Opportunity
A club, an event, a project, a placement, or teaching a younger student
PLP
One-to-one time with a teacher
Independent study
Their own work, set and marked by their subject teachers

Years 7 to 9 · five subjects, three live lessons each

BlockMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
Block 1MathsEnglishScienceEnglishScience
Block 2EnglishMathsGlobal PerspectivesComputingGlobal Perspectives
Block 3ScienceComputingMathsGlobal PerspectivesComputing
Block 4PLPOpportunityWell-Rounded ProgrammePLPIndependent study
Block 5Independent study, set and marked by their subject teachers

  1. Monday

    1. Block 1Maths
    2. Block 2English
    3. Block 3Science
    4. Block 4PLP

  2. Tuesday

    1. Block 1English
    2. Block 2Maths
    3. Block 3Computing
    4. Block 4Opportunity

  3. Wednesday

    1. Block 1Science
    2. Block 2Global Perspectives
    3. Block 3Maths
    4. Block 4Well-Rounded Programme

  4. Thursday

    1. Block 1English
    2. Block 2Computing
    3. Block 3Global Perspectives
    4. Block 4PLP

  5. Friday

    1. Block 1Science
    2. Block 2Global Perspectives
    3. Block 3Computing
    4. Block 4Independent study

Block 5, every dayIndependent study, set and marked by their subject teachers

PLP stands for Personalised Learning Programme. It is one-to-one time with a teacher, used either for extra help in a subject or for work that goes beyond the syllabus.

Subjects are examples. Each student’s own week is built from the subjects they are studying.

One Academy. One child. One direction of growth.

Potential is not developed in one lesson, one meeting or one programme. It develops when the whole education is working in the same direction.

Questions parents ask first.

Does it take time away from academic work?

No. It is one hour in a week of twelve to fifteen live lessons, and it usually makes those lessons work better. A confident child asks the question instead of staying quiet. An independent child works without being reminded. A child who has learned to recover tries again after a poor result. For most children this is the part that was missing.

Does every child get it, or only children who are struggling?

Every Academy student, from the week they join, until the week they leave. It starts because a child arrived, not because somebody raised a concern.

Does my child need a diagnosis to get extra help, or a test to get extra challenge?

Neither. There is no register and no selection. Extra help and extra challenge are arranged in exactly the same way, and by the same short route. Your child can ask for it, you can ask for it, a subject teacher can raise it, or their Mentor can. Their Mentor then arranges the time, and one of their subject teachers teaches it. A student receives it because they need it, not because they proved that they qualified.

My child already knows what they want to develop. Must they wait their turn?

No. Their two or three goals can sit in any of the five areas, and they are live from the week they choose them. A student who wants to lead something starts leading something. The half-term rotation exists so that the areas a student would never pick for themselves also get attention.

My child is already doing well. Is this for us?

Yes, and especially so. A child using two thirds of what they are capable of can still achieve an A, so nobody notices. We would rather find the other third.

How will I know it is working?

Because it is written down. Each term you see what your child chose to work on, what they actually did, and what changed, with dates.

Come and meet our Mentors.

Half an hour with the Mentor who would be your child’s. Ask them whatever you like, including what happens when it does not work. You are welcome to sit in on a live class on the same visit. A reply within one working day, from a person.

Book a ConsultationMentoring at IWS