A 'school of the future' immediately whisks its pupils away for a four-day expedition on their first day.
The ground-breaking idea has succeeded in making the learning hub hugely popular among pupils and parents.
XP School in Doncaster, Yorkshire has won plaudits for its innovative teaching method which thinks out of the box.
Standards are still important at the school, but it has more collaborative ethos where uniforms are not required.
Andy Sprakes, the co-founder of XP Trust told YorkshireLive : "We have to do lots of myth-busting, because sometimes people think we just let the kids do what they want.
"It's not like that at all. It's highly rigorous. It’s standards-based, it's collaborative and the curriculum is collaboratively planned by teachers.
"It takes a lot of hard work to do that, but the return that you get is absolutely phenomenal."
The trust receives the same level of funding as any other school and every single child in Doncaster has the same chance of getting a place as anyone else.
But walking into the school, it's immediately clear that the XP Trust does things differently.
Huge murals adorn the walls, schoolwork is plastered in the corridors and teachers plan lessons directly next to students in the open-plan communal areas.
Academics and teachers from Chile, Australia, America and Europe regularly visit to see how they can borrow ideas from the XP Trust and transfer them into their schools.
Perhaps the most notable difference is the absence of a school uniform. All 250 pupils wear whatever they want, within reason.
"It's about integrity," says Andy. "We have a dress code, which is that children come ready to do schoolwork. They're not wearing short skirts or t-shirts with inappropriate slogans on.
"For me, it's about taking away ceilings. We should be saying: 'Let's try and see what they can do'.
"I've been staggered over the past eight years when we've done things and the kids just take it in their stride."
The idea of creating a forward-thinking school was first planted in the mind of Andy a decade ago, when he visited High Tech High in San Diego. Along with co-founder Gwyn ap Harri, Andy became fascinated by the approach to embed the school at the heart of the community by giving children more freedom.
"What we saw in San Diego were students who were very mature in terms of their ability to communicate with adults, but also mature in terms of their ability to talk about their learning - how they learned and why they learn. That was very impressive.
"We thought we wanted to do something like that in the UK. It became a moral imperative to me. I thought: ‘Now I've seen it, I can't go back.’"
In 2014, the very first XP School opened, but the new building that now houses 250 children wasn't built yet.
Instead, the first 50 XP School students were taught at Doncaster Rovers' Eco-Power Stadium, a stone's throw from where the XP Trust is now established.
It marked the start of a longstanding relationship with local businesses, organisations and charities.
Andy said: "Schools often exist quite independently, but our expeditionary curriculum model really forces us to go beyond the school to look for partnerships which are meaningful and which have legacy as well.
"We have still got a very, very strong working relationship and partnership with Doncaster Rovers and Club Doncaster, the community section of the team. We use their facilities. They run our sports hall here.
"We've got these very strong cultural bonds with groups in our immediate community, but also beyond that as well.
"We really try and instil a kind of civic sense of pride in Doncaster through the work that we do. We've created some fantastic links with Age UK, the Conversation Club and Frenchgate Shopping Centre Shopping Centre, who really kindly display our work.
"One of our mantras is that we want to make the world a better place and we want our kids to do that actively, to be activists, in making the world a better place. Where better to start than your hometown."
Maths, English and Science are all taught at the XP Trust and students sit their GCSEs in exactly the same way as other schools, but the structure of the lessons is vastly different from what you might expect.
The expeditionary ethos means students often undertake lessons outside school.
And a single lesson can encompass a range of different subjects where they can learn elements of English, History and Science as part of the same project.
"We've got a core curriculum, which we follow and actually is quite a traditional curriculum in a lot of ways, but how we deliver it is is not conventional," said Andy.
"Subjects don't just exist in silos. There is connectivity between them and we feel that deepens and strengthens the will to learn by making those connections.
"Kids come to our school and understand why they're learning.
"It could be because we need to make a film about migrants in Doncaster, we need to write a book about how important the coal mining industry is to Doncaster or we're going to do a poetry slam at a local arts club.
"So there's always a meaning and a purpose to the learning."
As part of evert single school day is a 45-minute session in 'crews' as soon as pupils arrive.
Instead of sitting idly in form classes and taking a register, crews are encouraged to tackle issues affecting themselves and their peers.
It could be anything from preventing littering to understanding mental health.
It all falls under the banner of the school's motto: 'Above all, compassion'.
"If we get crew right, we get everything right," stresses Andy. "Nothing is more important than crew. It's the basis of our culture."
One of the most striking examples of how crews have shaped the school's ethos is how isolation was renamed 'reflection', in a bid to ensure pupils understand why they might have been taken out of the classroom.
Remarkably, there hasn't been a single student expelled from the XP Trust in the seven years since it was founded.
"We're constantly improving," says Andy. "We’re not perfect. We're not anywhere near where I think we could be in terms of outcomes and I'm conscious that there's still a great deal of work to be done, but I’m very proud.
"I’m not saying that we're the only model that works or that we're the best school in the world, but what we're doing is creating a model for how other schools could potentially do education."
YorkshireLive figures show just 17 per cent of those who put XP School as their first choice secondary school secured a place in September.
Only 43 were successful and including second and third preferences, there were 10.7 applications for each offered place.
XP East was the next hardest secondary to get into locally, with 7.8 applications for every place offered.
What started as a single school in one of Doncaster's most impoverished suburbs has ballooned into an eight-school academy.
XP School and XP East are situated side-by-side in the middle of Doncaster, with five local primary schools. The eighth school, XP Gateshead, opened in the North East in September 2021.
While the expansion has been exciting, Andy will never stray too far from his roots and says Doncaster will forever remain the heartbeat of the XP Trust.
"I’m a Doncaster lad. Gwyn, who founded the school with me, is a Doncaster lad. I live in Doncaster. My daughter comes to the school. It’s personal.
"So when we do great work, we do great work in our home town."
