Schools in England are achieving stronger academic results than ever, but alongside this success has come a growing recognition that performance alone is not enough. There is now a renewed focus on building inclusive school communities where every student feels a genuine sense of belonging.
This shift closely mirrors the transformation seen within Team GB five years ago, when a relentless pursuit of medals was balanced with a culture that prioritised wellbeing, inclusion, and collective identity.
In this blog, we explore what education can learn from Team GB’s journey and ask a vital question: can schools truly have it all — high academic achievement alongside deep, meaningful inclusion and sense of belonging?
Team GB: Performance vs Well-being
In the run-up to London 2012, Team GB made a strategic decision: concentrate resources, coaching and sport science on producing elite performers who can win medals. The coaching standards were raised, the facilities were improved and the overall professionalism increased. An evidence-informed approach saw players being supported by psychologists, strength and conditioning coaches, performance lifestyle advisors, nutritionist, biomechanics, not to mention the improvements in technology and equipment.
And the results were staggering. We went from only winning one gold in Atlanta 1996, to a record 29 goals in London 2012. This saw us climb from 36th rank to 3rd, as overall medals won increased by over 300%.
But it appears this came at a cost. Reviews from the likes of British Gymnastics, Cycling and Swimming found that athlete welfare had suffered with a ‘culture of fear’ and ‘excessive demands on young athletes’ leading to safeguarding complaints.
This begs the question; can we produce elite medal winning athletes whilst still creating a real sense of belonging? To try to do this, in 2021 the English Institute of Sport launched ‘Project Thrive’, which is a system-wide approach to building high-performance environments that develop the person as well as the performer. Other individual sports have launched their own initiatives too that prioritise well-being, belonging and support. Central to this is their belief it is not one-or-the-other. In fact, that high performance can and should be built off the foundation of athlete well-being.
We now have to wait to see what the results of this new direction will be. Will it maintain the high medal count? Will it improve athlete well-being? Will it do both, or neither? Only time will tell (Tokyo 2021 was too early into this process, and it was during COVID, so we’ll need a few more Olympic games before we can see clear trends).
What about schools?
We can see parallels with Team GB in the education system in England. Large-scale educational reforms over the past ten years have coincided with dramatic improvement in England’s performance in international tests for Maths and Reading. For example, in PISA tests England was ranked 27th in Maths in 2009 but 11th in 2022 and in Reading, England jumped from 25th in 2009 to 13th in 2022.
However, the picture within English schools is not all rosy. School attendance dropped during the pandemic and remains low with 8.8% of sessions missed in secondary schools – equating to almost a whole day of school missed per fortnight – and 5.3% in primary in 2024-25.
Worryingly, a recent report on school engagement found many students do not look forward to going to school with 61% of pupils giving the statement ‘I feel happy to go to school in the morning’ a rating of 5/10 or lower. A similar lack of school engagement for UK students has been found in international comparisons such as PISA 2022 and TIMSS 2023.
At the moment, there is a strong call to focus more on sense of belonging, inclusiveness and ensuring all children feel welcome and happy at school. It will be interesting to see how schools navigate this, what strategies they employ and what the impact of this will be.
Final Thoughts
Are high performance and inclusiveness/sense of belonging mutually exclusive? Team GB are betting on the two in fact being deeply intwined.
In many ways, schools now stand at a similar crossroads to Team GB a decade ago. The gains in performance are undeniable, but the next phase may depend on a broader definition of success; one that values how students feel, not just how they perform.
Framing the debate about one vs the other seems misguided and creates a false dichotomy. It also falsely suggests the success in academic achievement caused a reduction in things like attendance and school engagement. This is overly simplistic. The challenge facing education isn’t whether schools should pursue both, but how intentionally and effectively they can do so.
