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Ethos & Aims

Welcome to Heath Park

‘Heath Park is an outstanding school. It serves a community facing significant challenges and turns these potential barriers into opportunities for celebration and achievement. It has a culture of putting the interests and developments of every pupil first and a shared belief that all things are possible’.

Heath Park is a well established and highly successful, inner-city, ethnically diverse, community school. We benefit from a rich cultural diversity as we have a high proportion of students from minority ethnic groups, primarily Black Caribbean, Indian, and increasing numbers from Eastern European countries. This diversity is celebrated throughout the school and is reflected in our curriculum, which aims to maximise the potential of every student and to raise their feeling of self worth.

The curriculum at Heath Park encapsulate twenty first century concepts and provide opportunities for students to develop a set of attributes, skills and attitudes that will enable them to create and thrive on challenge, develop confidence, self reliance and willingness to embrace change. Our aim is to develop active learners with a capacity to shape their future and the future of our community.

Our two year Key Stage 3 curriculum is an example of our innovative approach to teaching and learning. The thematic curriculum is underpinned by the acquisition of skills and competencies, with the aim of creating a more autonomous learner, better equipped to maximise the opportunities that the remainder of their formal education will provide and, more importantly, face the challenges that ‘life long learning’ will present.

We at Heath Park are committed to continuous improvement and are constantly seeking ways of driving up standards. To this end, we have been successful. Judged ‘OUTSTANDING’, in last Ofsted Inspection. We have high achieving students – Key Stage 4 outcomes place the school’s value added measure in the top one percentile nationally. Both the Executive Headteacher and the Headteacher are National Leaders of Education – the only two appointed in the City from the secondary phase. We are a National Support School, were a pilot National Teaching School and now part of a Teaching School Alliance. Heath Park has delivered the full range of improvement programmes to schools in a number of different authorities in addition to playing a major role in the delivery of a two year leadership development programme in South Yorkshire.

As a further development of our school to school support we have created the Central Learning Partnership Trust (CLPT) – a multi academy single shared trust. It is aimed at addressing the short term needs of schools requiring support, through a long term solution, embracing a collaborative approach to continuous school improvement, involving Heath Park and possibly other partners. At the request of the Local Authority, supported by the Secretary of State, Heath Park became an Academy in December 2011, sponsoring Moseley Park who also became an academy in June 2012. Woden Primary School, East Dene Primary School and Coleridge Primary School joined the CLPT in April 2013.

Aims

The aims of the school are broad statements of intent for all its pupils rather than qualifications to be achieved by individuals. The most important aims at Heath Park are:

  • To foster respect for the individual and tolerance for the views and moral values of all races, religions and cultures.
  • To help each pupil to become a valuable and valued member of the community.
  • To assess the potential of pupils, to encourage their talents and abilities and to develop the basic skills which will be needed in adult life in a fast changing world.
  • To strengthen the foundation of skill knowledge on which further training and education can be built throughout life.
  • To improve standards in teaching and learning and provide greater educational opportunities for our students, our partner schools and our community, through the vehicle of the specialism of Business and Enterprise.
  • To provide a working environment in which learning and achievement are respected at all times.
  • To help pupils to think realistically about their own potential and prospects and prepare them for adult life by helping them to understand our society and how it works.
  • To establish a happy environment in which teaching and learning are always equated with enjoyment.
  • To encourage in all members of the school family a constant awareness of the needs of others and to foster love and care for one another as individuals and as members of the group.
  • To ensure that there is a full equality of opportunity for all pupils.
  • To ensure that no child is ever denied access to any part of the school’s provision on the grounds of administrative ‘convenience’.