Greenwood Dale School

The new Nottingham Academy opens for students on Monday 7 September 2009. The Academy is honoured to have the Minister for Schools and Learners, Vernon Coaker, joining us at 11.30 am that day.

Sponsored by the ‘outstanding’ (Ofsted 2007) and heavily oversubscribed Greenwood Dale School, based in Sneinton in Nottingham, the new Academy has been created from three predecessor schools, Greenwood Dale, Elliott Durham, an 11-16 school in National Challenge* and Jesse Boot, a 3-11 primary school.

Greenwood Dale has been given Academy sponsor status by the DCSF due to the excellence of the school’s work in very challenging circumstances. Greenwood Dale’s work was also celebrated in a report published by Ofsted earlier this year about twelve schools nationally achieving outstanding results despite serving areas with high levels of social and economic deprivation. (‘Twelve outstanding secondary schools, excelling against the odds’)

The Academy opens on the sites of the three predecessor schools whilst a major capital building programme takes place over the next three years. Over 350 new year 7 students start this September with the Academy’s nursery at capacity with 90 pupils.

This unique institution will have pupils from the ages of three to nineteen and will be the largest school in the UK with 3600 pupils on roll once the new accommodation is completed. Over 2200 students transfer to the Academy this September in the reduced accommodation in the existing school buildings.

The Academy is organised on a ‘schools within a school’ basis. With so many students and three sites to manage the operation is led and managed by a Chief Executive, Barry Day. Each of the three sites also has a Head of School to ensure that pupils, students, parents and staff see a traditional school structure on each of the sites. The Heads of School have complete day to day leadership and operational responsibility for their site.

The Academy serves a significantly deprived inner city area, as did the sponsor school, Greenwood Dale. Despite this Greenwood Dale students achieved highly, with the school adding more value between year 7 and year 11 than almost any other school in the country.

Greenwood Dale also achieved record A level and GCSE results this year together with Jesse Boot achieving record Key Stage 2 results.

With well over 700 students eligible for free school meals and over 40% of students with special educational needs the Academy faces some significant challenges. However, Chief Executive Barry Day, who was Headteacher of Greenwood Dale, sees this as ‘an opportunity to show just what children from inner city areas can achieve’. At Greenwood Dale, he added, ‘we achieved spectacular results and we shall continue to do so at the Academy for a much wider group of students. We will now be able to offer places to all those students we couldn’t take before because of oversubscription’.

The Academy has the equivalent of 174 full time teachers and 116 full time support staff. These numbers will grow significantly when the new buildings are ready.

Barry Day also commented on the ‘superb support the Academy had received from officers of the DCSF and Partnership for Schools’. He also mentioned how ‘interested and supportive both Ed Balls, the Secretary of State, and Vernon Coaker, the Minister of State for Schools and Learners, had been over the past year’.

Greenwood Dale is also the proposed sponsor for a new Academy in Lincolnshire, which is just about to enter the feasibility stage of the process. </ref>

Notable alumni

• Matt Gamble, Stand Up Comedian
• Tom Huddlestone football player currently with Tottenham Hotspur

Notes

Russ Hudson. Duke Of Edinburgh Leader.

References

• "Greenwood Dale School", BBC News, 19 October 2005
• "Nottingham Academy

External links

• Official site

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