uplands community college
Wadhurst
My name is Anna Robinson and I am the Executive Headteacher and Chief Executive
Officer of MARK Education Trust. Our trust was established in 2012, and for the
last 10 years has been a trust of one school, Beacon Academy in Crowborough.
From September 2022, we are delighted to have welcomed Uplands Academy into our
trust as our second school. I was the Headteacher of Beacon Academy from
September 2015 – August 2022 prior to becoming the Executive Headteacher from
September 2022, overseeing both of our schools. To support Uplands during their
first year as an Academy and member of our trust, for this academic year, I will
also be the named Headteacher of Uplands Academy. In addition, my colleague,
David Callard, with an excellent and sustained track record of senior leadership
at Beacon Academy, will also be joining me as our Senior Deputy Headteacher. In
addition to bringing additional leadership capacity and experience of school
improvement, we are looking forward to working with the well-known and
established Uplands senior team, its staff and most importantly our inspiring
and incredibly capable students. As with colleagues at Beacon Academy in
Crowborough, those of us at Uplands are ambitious for excellence in all we do.
Our vision aligns with our trust and that of Beacon Academy. This vision, which
is established and sustained, is to provide the best possible education for all
our students and to be an exceptional educational establishment for our
communities. We are never complacent. Becoming a student at Uplands Academy I
know that choosing a secondary school is one of the most important decisions you
will make for your children and family. At Uplands, the relationships between
our staff and our students are excellent and ones that we are proud of. Our
staff have high expectations, are ambitious for our students, and they know them
well. We pride ourselves on our rigorous focus on the child as a unique
individual, including our most disadvantaged and those with SEND. We ensure that
the lessons that our students receive are personalised and inclusive, enabling
them to be actively engaged in their learning. Uplands Academy Vision At Uplands
Academy, we want our children to be happy, successful and confident by providing
the best possible education for all our students. We want to be an exceptional
educational establishment for our community. Our curriculum for our students is
rightly ambitious - it is as broad as it is balanced. It has a strong academic
core which, where relevant includes vocational and technical ambitions with
choices for students to opt into in key stages four and five. Our curriculum is
expertly planned to maximise educational opportunities and prepare our students
to be socially and economically successful. As a result of this, we want our
students to develop keen interests, a lifelong passion for learning and an
impressive, coherent, and cumulative understanding of the world. All of this
meaning that they can consistently achieve highly and be prepared for future
success and happiness in education, employment or training. We have
uncompromisingly high expectations for the quality of education that our
students receive, including the most disadvantaged and those with SEND - there
is no room for complacency. We support and encourage our school community – we
expect everyone to Make their MARK academically by being motivated, articulate,
resilient and knowledgeable, both in their lessons and beyond, and socially both
inside and out of our school environment by having excellent manners, being
accepting, respectful and kind. These expectations are reflected in the
excellent relationships that exist between our board of trustees, staff,
students, parents, carers and the wider community. We recruit, retain and
develop exceptional staff and trustees to ensure that through every aspect of
their experience of Uplands, our students are inspired, engaged and challenged,
enabling them to make excellent progress and attain well. This includes our most
disadvantaged and those with SEND. Our staff care deeply - each day they strive
to be positive role models, thus supporting the inclusive culture of our school
environment. Our staff want our students to feel safe and happy and listened to
academically, socially and in terms of their well-being. We have a culture that
is highly aspirational and ambitious for excellence in all we do and where
commonalities are identified and celebrated and that differences are respected,
accepted, valued and nurtured. As staff we model what we want to see from one
another and our students – we promote and expect a positive and motivated
commitment to education from our students and their parents and carers. Our
standards are unapologetically high – this applies to both our staff and
students, thus enabling our teachers to teach and our students to learn and
excel, at Uplands Academy and beyond. We encourage you to come and see this and
Uplands for yourselves during this exciting new phase for our school.
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