Uplands Community College

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.