School focus: Sheffield Springs Academy

The secondary school in Gleadless provides a plethora of opportunities and experiences for its students to help them grow into confident, well-rounded and ambitious young adults.

From joining a new extra-curricular club or getting out and exploring the city they live in, they are expected to contribute to both the school community and the wider community and are encouraged to try things they wouldn’t necessarily do such as taking up a musical instrument or joining in on a drama performance.

It’s called ‘education with character’ and is something that is at the heart of school life, according to headteacher Mark Shipman.

He said: “We understand that students achieving in exams are the key reasons why they come to school and that’s obviously really important to us and for the young people that come here every day.

“But the other really important aspect of education, and particularly here at Springs, is around developing what we call education with character and it’s something that we’re big on at Sheffield Springs but also as part of the United Learning Trust.

“It’s ensuring that our students try to develop a breadth of experience that perhaps sometimes they might not get the opportunity to do.

“It’s about developing those key things – character, compassion, service.

“Young people within the school have told us that they really value that so while to them they’re learning and what goes on in the classroom is really important, they’re also really keen to take part in opportunities and develop their experiences outside of school.”

Every student takes part in the Springs Challenge, in which each year group, from Year 7 through to Year 11, has a set challenge to focus on throughout the year.

These challenges are designed with a focus on building leadership, communication and presentation skills, allowing students to understand the importance of resilience, challenge and problem-solving, as well as providing them with the opportunity to celebrate their success and achievements.

This could be anything from completing a presentation within an assembly and taking part in a debate, to organising a social action project such as raising resources for food banks in the immediate area and means that by the end of the academic year every student will have completed the same task as their peers.

Mr Shipman added: “Some do it individually but some are not maybe as confident to do that so they’ll do it with their peers.

“They support their local community and work alongside local community groups to try and improve the lives of residents within the community – again that’s really important to us.

“We’re trying as much as we can to impact on our local area as well and to get students to give something back.”

Elsewhere students also follow the Springs Promise –a list of 10 wider opportunities that each pupil will be given access to during their time at Sheffield Springs Academy.

Whether attending an artistic, cultural or sporting event to representing the school at a public-facing event, each Springs Promise is created in order to encourage the young people to develop new skills they can use as they move into further education and beyond.

“We try and do it on a local, national and international level as well,” Mr Shipman added. “So it’s things like regularly organising university visits, getting in inspirational speakers from the world of law, medicine, business – we try to promote those aspirations to our young people.

“As a school we track what they’re doing so when they come to leave us and apply for sixth form, college, university, apprentices, they leave with a set of exam results which are hopefully really good and they’ll also leave with a portfolio and evidence of experiences that they’ve had with us.

“We took 81 students a few weeks ago to Conway, a Year 11 study tour, that was really good. We’ve got a school in Guildford, Guildford High which is an independent school and we’ve done exchanges with them and we’ve also got a really fantastic Duke of Edinburgh programme.

“What we’re trying to do is bring the curriculum to life a little bit, so when we’re talking about what goes on in the curriculum we take that beyond the classroom.”