About the Academy
Working in Swindon Academy presents staff, both teaching and support, with an opportunity to be in a working environment which:
- is exciting and innovative
- will make a difference
- is successful
- has high expectations
- has strong leadership and management
- enables them to work with students from 0 – 19 and be involved in a large breadth of curriculum choice with strong curriculum partners
- treats all staff as professionals, making a large investment in professional development as it moves towards gaining training school status
- already has a strong and committed team of professionals
- uses peoples strengths to develop them and the organization
- has state of the art facilities and resourcing
- does not just pay lip service to inclusion but lives it.
It also gives staff an opportunity of working with ULT: An organisation which has been involved in the education of children from socially challenging areas for over 100 years. Working together as part of a group has significant benefits for staff, pupils and parents.
Most of all working in Swindon Academy gives staff the chance to be part of something special and innovative in creating a 0 – 19 school in the heart of its community.
Information about us
Swindon Academy is a mixed comprehensive school catering for up to 1800 children from Nursery to 19!
Swindon Academy has a strong, formal partnership with the local Sure Start and Family Services providers who will have a building on the same campus. This will enable parents to engage with the Academy from the birth of their child. It will also mean that we can provide a coherent and consistent approach to education from the start, ensuring that basic skills are secured.
Our new building is in the heart of Pinehurst. Our policy is to share our new facilities with other schools and with our community – thus being a learning resource for the whole area as well as our students.
Our vision is to bring about a step change in the education of our young people, ensuring that they are fully equipped with life long learning skills, by inspiring them to achieve. We face many challenges in our community and have made significant strides to move our young people towards their potential but this will always be hard to sustain. So many of our children lack the secured basic skills that they need, so many of our parents become disengaged as their child gets older and so many of our young people lack the aspirations to continue in education post 16. Our 0 – 19 Academy will help us to overcome these barriers by securing the foundations at a young age, engaging with parents from the start and providing opportunities post 16 which will, hopefully, engage young people in continuing education when they would normally have ceased.
We will become a high performance centre of learning which students develop life long learning skills and attitudes.
Organisation
The organisation and structure of our Academy has been built around the 0 – 19 ethos and the desire to ensure consistency and coherence all the way through.
We have divided the organisation into 3 Phases:
Foundation Phase - Sure Start through to Year 3
Development Phase - Year 4 – Year 8
Extension Phase - Year 9 – Year 14
These Phases deliberately overlap the traditional Key Stages in an attempt to overcome the dip which occurs at the end of one Key Stage and the beginning of another.
Teachers will be able to teach within and across the Phases as their experience and desire allows.
Curriculum
Our vision for the curriculum is ‘Independent, Inspired and Included’. We are striving to achieve a seamless and personalised provision for every student, using the best facilities, resourcing and staffing. Our Curriculum Leaders have responsibility for their areas from 0 – 19. We have a five year plan for curriculum innovation and are currently implementing the first stages of this.
We have strong partnerships to support our curriculum with local businesses, including our Corporate Partner HONDA. We also work closely with local feeder Primary Schools to share facilities and teaching. This enables all children in the area to benefit from a 0 – 19 provision.
Our curriculum structure is based around the 5 Early Learning Goals with Curriculum Areas of Enquiry (Maths and Science), Empathy (Humanities), Sport and Health Education (PE, Dance and PSHE), Communication (English and MFL) and DAIT (Design and Information Technology).
In addition we have 5 Cross Curricular areas of Expressives (Art, Music and Drama), Personalised Learning, Learning to Learn, Business and Enterprise and Inclusion (SEN and Learning Support).
Our curriculum extends beyond the day to a full programme of out of hours learning and community learning.
Our Specialism is Science with Business and Enterprise and our link with Honda is invaluable in supporting this.
We also offer a full range of courses for our students including the traditional A’ Levels and GCSEs plus extensive vocational qualifications. We are also exploring the I.B. at 16.
Accomodation
Our sports facilities are Sport England standard and arguably the best in the area.
As the Academy prepares to move into its brand new building we are proud to be able to offer our teachers, well resourced learning spaces whereby they can teach engaging lessons, stimulating students via the latest technology. Every Curriculum area is well supported by state of the art technology and a comprehensive resource base. We are high tech in every way!!
We also have excellent sports facilities which Sport England standard and arguably the best in the area. These facilities we hope will be widely used by the school and the wider community.
Partnership
We are fortunate to have three very strong and invaluable partnerships. The United Learning Trust is our sponsor. They are the largest sponsor of Academies in the country and have been involved in education for over 100 years. Because of this commitment and history they provide a strong infrastructure to support staff and students. This includes professional development opportunities. It is a subsidiary of the not-for-profit charity, the United Church Schools Trust (CST) and shares with it
the objective of managing schools which offer students a high quality education. With an ethos based on their founding Christian principles of respect, service and compassion, discipline and hard work, ULT helps to prepare young people for a rewarding and enriching adult life.
Our corporate sponsor and one of our Benefactors, HONDA, help us bring learning to life. They work with us in a whole host of ways through the curriculum and providing expertise and support for staff.
We are very fortunate to work in close partnership with one of the top public schools in the world, Marlborough College. This is an informal partnership based on mutual respect and sharing of expertise.
Useful Links
For progress on our new building or for news and events please visit our website at www.swindon-academy.org
