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Academy Ethos
A Learning Ethos for the Harris Academy Beckenham
The Harris Academy Beckenham will be a place where learning comes first. We will be characterised by being: a vibrant purposeful Academy at the heart of the local community; a centre of academic excellence for all; a place where inspirational and passionate teaching stimulate a thirst for learning in all our students and a place where every student makes exceptional progress regardless of their demographic profile. Aspirations will be high for every student. From the age of eleven to nineteen there will be personalised, challenging and creative learning pathways that are appropriate to each student’s individual learning profile. The Harris Academy Beckenham will ensure that ability and talent is identified and nurtured and where achievement is recognised, valued and sought after by students and staff. We will establish an environment where students are positive about their own and others’ achievements and where all staff are eager to affirm this through regular praise, approval and recognition of academic excellence.
By combining Science and Enterprise as our specialisms, we will create a vibrant learning environment in which the concepts of discovery, innovation and ground breaking achievement can flourish. As well as embedding an enriching, challenging science curriculum, comprising personalised pathways to a range of academic qualifications, we will encourage our students to adopt a systematic, precise and logical approach to their academic studies. This will be partnered with a resourceful, inventive and resilient, ‘can do’ attitude to guarantee high achievement.
We will enhance our capacity to rapidly improve the quality of teaching and learning through harnessing the learning power of four key competencies Resilience, Resourcefulness, Reflectiveness and Reciprocity across the curriculum.
Resilience: Being emotionally in tune with learning
Students will demonstrate perseverance even when learning tasks are challenging and are able to manage distractions to enable deep learning to occur. Students are able to recognize barriers but still overcome them, applying a systematic and logical approach to completing tasks, to allow full absorption in the learning process.
Resourcefulness: Being cognitively perceptive of learning
Reflective students plan in a precise and methodical way to improve learning outcomes, and are able to revise plans as appropriate to maximize success. Students demonstrate flexibility and adaptability to reach and surpass new challenges, and can detect own learning capacity through meta-cognition.
Reflectiveness: Being strategically aware of learning potential
Resourceful students exploit the widest range of stimuli to aid learning and learning outcomes. Students are able to use analytical, disciplined and inventive thinking and to be able to take risks and experiment, forging links between disparate themes and concepts. A determination to discover new phenomena and unearth ground breaking concepts is a key motivating factor.
Reciprocity: Being socially adept at learning
Reciprocity involves developing the skills required to be an effective and efficient collaborative learner, demonstrating leadership and partnership skills to produce the best possible learning outcomes. They show sophisticated skills of empathy, using enquiry, investigative and experimentation.
Please click here to download Our Learning Ethos booklet for September 2012