Impact28th January 2026

Ark Boulton: A culture of achievement and pride

Outcomes at Ark Boulton in 2025 were its strongest ever, making it Ark’s most-improved school.

Ark Boulton Academy

Improved outcomes included:

• A 16-percentage point increase in students achieving at least a 4+ in English and maths (from 51% to 67%)
• A 15-percentage point increase in students accessing their first-choice destination (from 60% to 75%).

Principal, Laurence Cole, shares his insights on the school’s improvement journey.

When I think about what has driven the transformation at Ark Boulton, it’s the staff and pupil culture in the school. ‘Proud to be Boulton’ is like a tagline, a brand, that we’ve created. Our pupils face a lot of barriers. Many are facing poverty, have experienced trauma and adverse childhood experiences. But if they find somewhere they belong and somewhere they feel happy, then they’ll turn up to school. This cultural shift has had a real impact on attendance and outcomes. Attendance has improved massively, from around 89 percent in 2022 to 2023, to 94.5 percent now.

Knowing every child

Knowing your pupils starts with being present and building real relationships. I meet every Year 11 pupil through the Principal’s Breakfast. I invite 4 pupils in to have breakfast with me every morning from 8am to 8.20. We sit down, have some food, and I ask them about their favourite subjects and what they want to do when they’re older.

That daily investment means every child feels seen. I know their names and when I see them in the playground, I can ask how they are. It sets the tone in the year group. Then, when I stand up in front of them at the start of every exam and I say that we believe in them, we believe they can do it, it feels more meaningful because they’ve had a conversation with me. They know this is somebody who cares and they’re not just a number.

Positive framing

We celebrate everything that’s positive. We’ve created a new rewards strategy and a new rewards policy and did a lot of training with staff around positive framing. In every staff briefing or pupil assembly we shout out good things that have happened.

Another example is our Core Knowledge Parties. Every curriculum lead has stripped their curriculum back to the absolute core knowledge. The core knowledge assessments check 20 golden nuggets of knowledge that pupils should have learned and revised. It’s accessible to all pupils. If they get over 95% in every subject, then they get invited to the Core Knowledge Party. More than 150 pupils came to the last one at the start of this term.                                                                                                                                                 

Destinations and ambition

The interesting thing in the data is the correlation between the increase in outcomes and in pupils being able to access their first choice post-16 destination.  If we get careers guidance right, if we get destinations planning right, and if we then get our teaching right off the back of that, then there’s no reason why every pupil can’t go on to do exactly what they want to do in the future.