Welcome to Buckler's Mead Academy. It is my privilege, as ...

Welcome to Buckler’s Mead Academy. It is my privilege, as Headteacher of Buckler’s Mead Academy, to welcome you to our academy and tell you a little more about us. Buckler’s Mead is for students aged 11-16, co-educational, and converted to an academy on 1 August 2011. We very much believe in serving our local community and the vast majority of our students live within walking distance. We have high aspirations for our students and high expectations. In 2011 Buckler’s Mead was identified by OFSTED as one of the top 100 improving schools within the country and by 2015 our value added (the progress students make from their entry to leaving at the end of Year 11) had risen another 32 points. We are very proud of students and their achievements. We frequently talk about “opening doors” for our students in the future and learning is central this. We aim to ensure that Buckler’s Mead students are happy, interested and engaged in their learning and responsible, confident, successful members of the community. We are very proud of the strong, positive relationships which exist within and beyond the academy. We invest time in building these relationships and have a number of staff who are dedicated solely to pastoral work, ensuring that parents can have easy access and continuity in who they contact if they need to talk to someone about their son or daughter. Parental surveys are undertaken regularly by Buckler’s Mead Directors, who attend a number of events throughout the year to meet and listen to parents. These indicate that over 97 % would recommend Buckler’s Mead to another parent. In October 2014 OFSTED visited and rated us as at least ‘Good’ in all areas. They praised many aspects of our provision, including commenting on: students’ enjoyment of their time here, politeness and good manners; behaviour and attendance, how safe the students feel; the rapid progress made as an academy and the commitment to success for all students. Please take the time to look through our website for further information and more details about us. However we believe that any website or prospectus can only give you a flavour of the academy and what we stand for. It cannot truly give you a feel for the atmosphere or the quality of work and relationships within it so we would like to invite you to meet staff and students during a working day and find out more about us. We would be delighted to meet you. To arrange this please contact my PA, Deborah StPaul, on 01935 424454 or e-mail her on: [email protected] .

SARA GORROD Headteacher