Harris Girls' Academy East Dulwich Prospectus

ASPIRE, LEARN, SUCCEED

“ This is an outstanding Academy.

Central to this is the relentless pursuit of excellence by leaders and managers and the highest aspirations for every student.�

Ofsted 2012

Your daughter’s

education Thank you for requesting a copy of our prospectus and for considering Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich for your daughter’s education. We recognise that there is nothing more important than finding a school where she will be happy and safe, thrive academically and socially, and realise her full potential.

This is an outstanding school. Your daughter, whether an academic high flier or someone who finds academic learning more challenging, will make outstanding progress; indeed, all of our students make more progress here than in 97% of other schools in the country. We are incredibly proud of the dedication of our girls and the staff who help make this happen.

Teaching is outstanding across the Academy because staff are well qualified, highly trained and totally committed to transforming the lives of the girls with whom we work.

We know that our students will leave us academically successful, but we also want them to be well-rounded individuals with a highly developed social conscience, ready to lead in their communities and beyond. Everything that we do, from assemblies to after-school activities, is designed to develop the values of courage, commitment, character and conscience in your daughter; she will leave Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich ready to take on the challenges of the world beyond school.

We believe that all students should have access to the best that education has to offer and so private singing and musical instrument lessons are offered free of charge, including the provision of an instrument. Each year we organise numerous trips in London, across the UK and abroad.

A number of these are fully funded or subsidised.

Please do visit us on our open days and chat to our students and teachers about their experiences here. It really is a marvellous school and we would be delighted to welcome you.

Mrs Carrie Senior, Principal

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A safe and welcoming

community for our Year 7s

We recognise how important it is that your daughter settles well into her new life at secondary school.

Moving to secondary school can be scary – but not here.

Our intake is intentionally small so that your daughter can be known as an individual. Transition to secondary school starts well before the summer holidays with staff visiting our feeder primary schools to speak to primary teachers about how to help your daughter be successful. Our induction day in July gives all of our new girls a chance to meet their new friends and teachers for the first time. Any students with additional educational needs have a second day to prepare for the change coming in September.

The first day in September is just for Year 7. All of our students will have a form tutor and a buddy or mentor to look after them, and sixth formers are buddied up with

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Year 7 groups for additional support. Our Health Hut offers our ‘mistakes lab’ experience, which helps girls learn that making mistakes is part of learning, and our week-long residential visit for Year 7 establishes strong bonds between the girls (and the staff) early on.

You’ll notice that senior staff and the pastoral team are on the gate every morning to welcome your daughter and to see her safely off home at the end of the day. The pastoral team and senior staff will frequently be seen in your daughter’s lessons, in corridors and in the playground so that the Academy is consistently positive and calm. Both teams are highly visible because we recognise how important feeling safe is to learning successfully.

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“ The teachers are dedicated and of a high standard. Each teacher takes a genuine interest in encouraging the girls to achieve their full potential.�

PARENT

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Our

curriculum

Girls are divided into sets, which they can move between at different stages of their academic career depending on their needs. This means that whether your daughter needs to be stretched, is struggling or is somewhere in the middle, we always work to inspire the best in her.

In Year 7, your daughter will have lessons in English, maths, science, history, geography, religious education, art, design technology, drama and music. Students start with Spanish, but they can choose between Spanish, French and Italian and Latin for their GCSEs. We also offer a range of other languages for those who might speak them at home – such as Polish, Portuguese, Bengali and Urdu. There is also one hour of sport per week and an hour of computer science.

We have a formal reading scheme in which your daughter will read a book each week throughout Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9. The result of this is that our girls are able to become confident readers with good knowledge of the classics and contemporary literature.

Your daughter will begin studying towards her GCSEs in Year 9, which spreads her workload over three years instead of two, to give her the best chance of success.

GCSE option selections are made in individual meetings with you, your daughter and a senior member of staff.

We go to every length to ensure lessons are engaging: we’ve even installed a real ambulance in one of our classrooms where students interested in health and medical careers can get hands-on experience to supplement their theoretical learning.

There is one-to-one and small group tuition for students who need it. And, through our work with key professionals, universities and PhD students, our outstanding students have university-style tutorials and learn to craft high quality extended essays from as early as Year 8. As part of this experience, we aim to give our Year 9 students a taste of university life through visits to a Russell Group university or an Oxbridge college or through visitors to the Academy – this gives them a taste of what is to come as they work hard and apply themselves.

Teachers deliver Period 6 lessons two nights per week and weekly masterclasses for older students, to support readiness for public examinations. Our library is open from 7.30am until 5.30pm so that students can do their homework and other private study with Academy staff around to help them. The Academy also offers Saturday morning tutorials in English and maths which are free of charge to participating students.

We send reports home three times a year and make regular contact via telephone and email so that parents always know how their daughter is progressing.

We keep classes small – the average size is around 21 students.

Consolidation and regular checking of learning are key features of lessons in our Academy. We encourage students to be studious, articulate and resilient learners who understand that we are all on the same side and who are passionate about doing well.

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Developing students’

interests

Opportunities outside the classroom are endless.

As well as an annual skiing holiday, there is a joint residential trip for Year 7 with the Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich. Both trips run during Academy holidays.

Many of our students love the arts, something we do everything we can to encourage. There are trips to the opera, theatre and ballet, as well as to art galleries across London. Our art department hosts a thriving art research centre, bringing together academia and education in a unique partnership.

Our choir have sung at a dinner for the Prime Minister and they perform for a wide range of audiences. Our girls perform annual musicals and the Christmas concert is a highlight of the school year.

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There are clubs every day after school, such as trampolining, pottery, Italian and ballet.

Our annual East Dulwich Literary Festival offers all students the opportunity to participate in a wide range of trips, performances and workshops designed to develop a love of literature that will stay with students for the rest of their lives. Past highlights have included a performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Young Shakespeare Company, a one-man show by the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens, workshops with poets and an evening with the author, Adele Geras.

Students have also created a social enterprise, called HOPE (Helping Others Promoting Enterprise). They have raised over £25,000 for charities by selling products they have made such as cupcakes and silk scarves. You can sample their merchandise by visiting their online shop at www.hope-harris.org.

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Many of our students opt for private singing or musical instrument lessons. Piano is one of the most popular.

We subsidise the lessons in full to ensure that everyone can participate.

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Sixth Formers

We are part of the Harris Federation Sixth Form and therefore education here is co-educational in Years 12 and 13. Our sixth formers are role models for our younger students.

The Sixth Form offers everything our students love about their Harris education in an environment where they are treated as young adults. It involves a step change and a new relationship with teachers: our sixth formers wear suits not uniform and plan for a working day that fits in with a new type of learning.

We aim to give our Sixth Form students access to top level professionals. For example, our English department organises regular A Level conferences on key texts and authors, bringing a range of professors and other specialists in their fields to present to our Sixth Form delegates.

Our students look at Sixth Form as the race to the finishing line of their pre-university education. This period of their education is filled with opportunities to develop their experience and to work with leading practitioners in the field in which they are interested.

Children at Nabiswa Community School, Uganda, pictured reading children’s books in their community language (Lugwere) for the first time ever, thanks to students at Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich. Our students worked with Professor Coates (Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Roehampton University) to understand the construct of the Lugwere language and to create these books. The orthography for this language has only been written down in the past seven years and these are the first children’s picture books ever created in Lugwere.

For example, the Evelina Children’s Hospital offers three internships a year to our A Level students wanting to study medicine. We also have links with top London universities including King’s, Imperial and Goldsmiths, enabling our students to attend university lectures and conferences.

The Harris Federation Sixth Form has progression agreements with several excellent universities in London and the South East and is continuing all the time to expand this list. This means that, if our students can make the grades, they are guaranteed an offer of a place at these universities.

The Sixth Form regularly sends students to top Russell Group universities, specialist arts, drama and stage schools, and direct into training for the careers of their choice.

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Harris Federation The Harris Federation is a not-for-profit charity. Led and run by teachers, we established our first school over 25 years ago.

There are now more than 40 happy and highly successful primary and secondary academies in our federation. All of these are in and around London. With each school that has joined us, the expectations we set ourselves have increased.

Every Harris academy so far inspected by Ofsted is rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, with three quarters of our inspected secondary academies judged ‘outstanding’. Our primary schools are newer, but almost half are ‘outstanding’, with the rest ‘good’.

As well as joint working between the teachers at our academies, there are many shared experiences for our students. These include federation-wide sports days at the National Sports Centre; Harris Experience, a unique programme that readies our most able students for life at top universities; and inter-academy events such as one-to-one reading partnerships between our primary and secondary schools, World Maths Day and Debate Mate.

You can follow the Harris Federation on Twitter: @HarrisFed

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Each year for Sports Day, the Harris Federation hires the Crystal Palace Sports Stadium. With well over 10,000 student and staff spectators in attendance, Academies compete in team and individual sports.

The sound of students cheering each other on is so loud that Team GB athlete Louise Jukes who happened to be nearby tweeted: “Can hear hundreds of kids screaming from the stadium at Crystal Palace! What a great noise! Kids loving sports day! Wish I was a kid again!”

From the Chief Executive The Harris Federation is a London charity with twenty five years of experience in education. Our Academies combine the traditional values of good manners, strong discipline and smart uniform with the best of modern teaching and technology.

Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich is an outstanding Academy producing confident, articulate and successful young women. Working closely together in and around London, Harris Academies are able to offer a far broader range of opportunities, far better training and professional development for staff and real success for our students.

What makes this Academy so successful? Students who enjoy learning and look forward to coming to school each day; teachers and support staff who are genuinely ambitious for every student; a senior leadership team that consistently sets standards of excellence.

If your daughter wants to come to an Academy with drive and ambition, then I hope you will attend one of its open events to find out more.

Sir Daniel Moynihan Ed.D, M.A., B.Sc. (Econ) Chief Executive of the Harris Federation

From the Sponsor As an employer and a father I strongly believe that a good education is the best start in life that you can give a child.

Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich promotes hard work, curiosity of mind, integrity and ambition. It works tirelessly, in partnership with the other Harris Academies, to ensure the greatest success for every child, regardless of their ability or aptitude.

I hope you will come along to our various Open Day or Evening Events to see for yourself the difference the Academy is making.

Lord Harris of Peckham

B2 38

Homestall Road, London SE22 0NR T: 0207 732 2276 F: 0207 277 7785 Email: info@harrisdulwichgirls.org.uk www.harrisdulwichgirls.org.uk

www.hope-harris.org