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Description
Ridgeway Academy is a member of the Ambition Education Trust, together with Sandringham, St Albans Girls' School, The Adeyfield Academy, Verulam, Beech Hyde Primary School & Nursery, Garden Fields JMI, Skyswood Primary and Nursery, Wheatfields Junior and Wheatfields Infants’ and Nursery schools. We work in a multi-academy trust to share best practice, deliver joint training, promote the highest of expectations and raise achievement for all students. The AET motto is ‘Educational Excellence for All’. The trust offers significant opportunities for career development of staff at all levels within our organisation. This is an exciting time to join the school as it takes the next step in its journey to becoming good and then outstanding.
We opened in September 2018, as part of the Alban Academies Trust, to great excitement from our community with the aim of becoming a truly outstanding school in the future. Our motto is ‘Everyone can achieve’ and we are looking to appoint outstanding people who can help us achieve our ambitions.
One of the key features of Ridgeway Academy is its impressive campus. The site has the benefit of two school halls, plenty of rooms to accommodate the wide range of subjects on offer and significant amounts of outdoor space between the buildings. This means that students can enjoy the benefit of a large campus and the school has plenty of scope for future expansion. The financial position of Ridgeway Academy is secure and the school works pro-actively with colleagues in the Ambition Education Trust to sustain this.
As part of the conversion to academy status, a £1m capital refurbishment programme was completed during summer 2018. This has transformed the site resulting in a wonderful learning campus for young people to enjoy. In 2015 a new sports complex and 3G pitch was opened and further investment is planned.
Ridgeway Academy are committed to offering its students the best educational experience possible, taught by highly skilled and specialist staff. The school encourage all teaching staff to become reflective practitioners who strive to continually improve their own subject knowledge and pedagogy, as well as embracing ideas from educational research. The school’s teaching and learning programme focuses on holding high expectations of all students and staff and ensuring that every lesson counts; every student can achieve; every opportunity is available to our young people.
Ridgeway Academy offers teaching staff a full programme of professional development focused on the school priorities; current OFSTED framework; individual staff requirements and current educational research and pedagogy. Staff are empowered to hold autonomy over their own professional development and encouraged to participate in a wide variety of training and sharing of good practice. Teaching staff are encouraged to train as subject specific examiners and share their knowledge within subject teams and across the Trust. An annual AET teaching and learning conference provides wider opportunities including key note speakers; teacher led workshops; team building and enrichment activities. In addition, Middle Leaders participate in an annual AET conference and termly collaboration and moderation opportunities across the Trust. Ridgeway Academy offer a wide variety of professional development training courses through the excellent provision of the Alban TSH. The AET run a programme of Peer Reviews which allow staff to visit other schools within the Trust and work with the senior leaders on strategic development of the school. This offers a fantastic professional development for teaching staff and supports inter-school collaboration yet further.
As part of the AET we offer an enhanced summer induction programme for all our Early Career Teachers (ECTs). This programme begins at the end of June/beginning of July and runs for three weeks. The induction programme is delivered at home schools as well as jointly, enabling all ECTs to meet their peers within the Trust. Support is provided by subject and senior leader mentors and we offer subject specific as well as general training through the Alban Teaching School Alliance (ATSA) and Herts for Learning (HfL) events.
Ambition Education Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Appointment to a post at AET is subject to a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, as well as other pre-appointment checks including an online check, as outlined in Keeping Children Safe in Education.
We are committed to the aim of ensuring that everyone who applies to work for us receives fair treatment and we positively encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of age, disability, race, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership and caring status. We expect all our staff to demonstrate a commitment to advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations.