Every year, we honour the most outstanding innovative practice from across all our award winners. This special award is chosen by the Chair of the independent Judging Panel.
From 2025, it carries a new name, the Kathryn Rudd Innovator of the Year Award, in memory of Kathryn, who sadly passed away in 2023.
Katherine Rudd, OBE
Kathryn Rudd was a former Principal of National Star College and Chair of Natspec for 4 years. In 2014, she was awarded an OBE for services to education for young adults with physical and learning disabilities. In 2019, Kathryn joined Ofsted and was promoted to HMI and a policy role, leading on the development of a new area inspection framework for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. She devoted her career to ensuring these young people received the educational opportunities and support they needed to reach their potential.
Kathryn was known for her passion, enthusiasm, and commitment to specialist education. Her impact continues to inspire staff, students, and the wider community, and will be felt for years to come.
This award is dedicated to her memory, recognising her innovative spirit and and her drive to improve the life opportunities of young disabled people through access to high quality specialist FE. We hope that she would have been proud to see the work of the colleges we celebrate as part of the awards.
2026 winner of the Kathryn Rudd Innovator of the Year Award
In 2026 we awarded the prestigious Kathryn Rudd award to William Henry Smith Specialist College for their curriculum project that introduced Dungeons & Dragons to learners, allowing them to develop empathy, creativity, negotiation and resilience.
Jim Aleander said: “The college used a widely available online game, Dungeons and Dragons, as a tool for student engagement, personal growth and academic success. It clearly demonstrated the development of core curriculum and life skills in a novel, beneficial way, adapted to the needs of individual learners and transferable to other contexts, benefiting students with special educational needs and disabilities.”
2025 winner of the Kathryn Rudd Innovator of the Year Award
In 2025, the first winner of this prestigious award was the Deaf Academy for their successful campaign for traffic calming measures outside the school and college.
Engaging with the local community, local and national media, and the local authority, students helped to raise Deaf awareness and educate the hearing public about their right to have their voices and views heard. Students were able to secure funding from the community, a local trust, and three local councillors via Devon Council’s Locality Budget to fund a puffin crossing, zig-zag road markings, 20mph signs, and flashing lights outside the school and college.
This was a powerful use of the Student Voice that demonstrated what can be achieved from whole communities rallying together, led by young Deaf people, when skills, energies and resources are brought together.
The innovative part of this was the student’s leadership of external campaigning and fundraising over a period of time, resulting in much greater community awareness, media engagement, local authority changes to budget and, of course, the traffic calming they achieved.
The Kathryn Rudd trophy was designed and made at National Star College where Kathryn was Principal. It was presented to the Deaf Academy at the Natspec National Conference.