Welcome to Sheffield Springs Academy, I’m Claire Cartledge, and I am very proud to be the principal of our wonderful school.
Our mission is to provide our students with an excellent education. We are determined to ensure that all our pupils will leave us with a great set of qualifications, we know the impact this can have on a young person’s future success and wellbeing. In addition to qualifications, we provide a range of enrichment experiences that will enable our pupils to access the best possible opportunities post-16. We want our pupils to develop into confident, healthy and happy adults who go on to lead successful lives.
We have four key values at Sheffield Springs Academy and our pupils and staff demonstrate these every day, these are:
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Respect
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Excellence
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Ambition
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Pride
Together these values make up the SSA Way, this is how we work together every day, week, and year to achieve the best in everyone.
Excellence in learning is our absolute priority, we are extremely ambitious for our pupils. We are a ‘disruption free’ academy, this means that lessons are not permitted to be disturbed by poor behaviour and pupils are expected to work incredibly hard towards their goals. We value reading highly, and we enable pupils to read meaningfully every day, both in form time and during lessons. We also provide reading intervention and targeted support for those pupils where reading could otherwise present a barrier to learning.
We have extremely high standards; we expect pupils to conduct themselves well at all times. Pupils should wear their uniform with pride and attend school on time, every day. We work hard to develop pupils and support them to meet these high standards, we deliberately practice routines such as line-up, and pupils learn the ‘why’ through our character curriculum and during assemblies. Purposeful lessons and safe, calm corridors mean that everyone feels welcome, and ensures that excellent learning can always take place.
Education with character is a key part of the SSA Way, we offer a range of learning outside the classroom to support the curriculum, our pupils get the opportunity to go on many trips and visits including local visits in Sheffield right through to residential overseas trips. We provide regular drop-down days delivered by our own staff and we invite in excellent external speakers to educate pupils on a range of essential topics such as careers guidance, mental health, and keeping themselves safe.
Student leadership is extremely important to us at Sheffield Springs Academy, and we are very proud of our team of student leaders, and of our head boys and head girls. We are a listening school, and we regularly seek, and act upon, feedback from our student voice and our student leadership teams.
We prioritise safeguarding, our excellent pastoral care team make sure that every pupil always has someone to go to should they need support, every pupil has a form tutor they see each day and a dedicated non-teaching head of year to offer support. Finally, Sheffield Springs is a UNICEF rights respecting school, we put the rights of pupils at the centre of everything we do, always acting in the very best interests of our pupils.
Should you wish to visit then please do not hesitate to contact us. I am really proud of our young people, staff and the community we serve and would be delighted to show you around our school.
Yours sincerely,
Ms C Cartledge
Principal