Personal Development

Personal Development

Personal Development at Haywood Academy is built upon the foundations of our school values, which are portrayed in our school motto ‘Dream, Believe, Achieve.’ Our values underpin our school culture and are our daily expectations for all children across the academy.

At Haywood Academy, children’s school years should be filled with the greatest experiences that are linked to our rich, vibrant and creative curriculum. All children have a Unifrog account where we can record all enrichment activities that each individual student has taken part in which will lead to a comprehensive list of activities that they have experienced by the time that they reach Year 11, which can then be used to form a substantial personal statement and CV. As an Academy, we strive to create many happy memories together and build happy, healthy children who have been involved in a number of experiences that will ensure that they are ready for their future.

We have designed an innovative curriculum to support children on their individual journeys to gather additional knowledge and skills that will support their Personal Development now and in the future. All subjects map out cultural capital and personal development throughout each academic year. We also actively promote and develop pupil’s understanding and appreciation for Fundamental British Values – Rule of Law, Democracy, Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect, and Tolerance through our PSHE curriculum and tutorial activities.

We provide a wealth of opportunities for children’s Personal Development and we monitor and tailor our provision according to both group and individual needs. These link closely to our PSHE Curriculum, various SMSC opportunities, and assemblies. By offering a unique, varied, and diverse range of experiences, we help to prepare our children for life in modern day Britain. We want each child to leave school feeling confident, unique, and proud.

To see our breadth of Personal Development opportunities, please click on the links below.

• https://clt.haywood.coop/news_post/newsletters/  
• https://clt.haywood.coop/parents-and-carers/key-dates/  
• https://clt.haywood.coop/news/
• https://clt.haywood.coop/students/extra-curricular/

Character Education

At Haywood Academy, we are proud to be a partner school in the Character & Arts Foundation and our children will be taking part in a plethora of exciting and enriching opportunities. Please see the details below and the attached link https://citylearningtrust.org/character-arts-foundation/

Through our rich, exciting and creative curriculum, we focus on teaching pupils to be the best they can be, to take pride in their work, and to be positive members of the Academy and wider community. We want children to thrive on challenge, love learning, respect each other, and have attributes that will ensure that they will be grow into valued members of society.

Our weekly assemblies teach pupils about personal qualities valued in modern society but also enable our children to explore issues relating to direct rule, behaviour, bullying, exploring different cultures and key themes linked to SMSC and the wider world around them.

We celebrate achievements in different subjects weekly which enables students to be awarded with a certificate, Principal’s Award and positive ClassCharts points to rewards our students when they have worked hard and achieved in various lessons throughout the week. This is then celebrated where possible on social media and the Academy website.

Every half term we run an achievement assembly where we celebrate children’s achievements in the form behaviour points on ClassCharts, attendance, raffle winners, Timetable Rockstars achievements, Sparx Reader, Sparx Maths and Sparx Science achievements and any other achievements that each year group have taken part in throughout that half term.

On a termly basis, children are nominated for a CEO award, where the children are presented with a certificate and prize from the CEO of the Trust. Students who have behaved exceptionally well throughout the term will also be invited to an extra special activity at the end of each term that is organised by their head of year. These activities change each term but have included in the past silent discos, Bee Active inflatables, visits from ice cream vans, choice of extracurricular activities within the school day, Christmas activities and quizzes, colour runs, as well as various year group trips to locations such as The Trafford Centre, bowling, cinema, Alton Towers, outdoor pursuits providers and many more.

Pupil Voice and Student Leadership 

We believe that the views and experiences and influence of our children are a crucial part of our drive to continuously improve the provision for all children at Haywood Academy. We, therefore, seek ways to listen to the views of our pupils and involve them in decision-making across the school. We have created a range of meaningful roles for pupils to allow them to develop their leadership skills in the form of:

• Year 7 Ambassadors
• School Council reps
• Peer mentors
• Prefects
• Senior Prefects
• Head students
• EAL Ambassadors
• Eco Council
• Literacy leaders
• Sports Leaders

In addition to the valuable feedback that we receive from all student leadership teams identified above, we also collect whole school student voice every half term which forms our agendas for all school council meetings so that we can action and implement changes in a timely manner.

Careers and Enterprise

At Haywood Academy, we recognise the important role that schools have in enabling children to have high aspirations about their future through independent and impartial career advice. As a school, we endeavour to provide children with a range of meaningful experiences, visits, and visitors that teach them about the world of work and provide information about future careers. We are focussed on embedding career-related learning throughout our curriculum. We help children to understand who they could become and encourage them to develop a healthy sense of self that will enable them to reach their full potential.

Our career-related learning encompasses activities that involve employers, raising aspirations and broadening children’s horizons. We do this by ensuring that careers are featured throughout the curriculum through topic-based activities, discrete lessons and drop-down days with specific career-based themes for each year group and additional drop down days focussed on enterprise activities Years 7,8 and 9. More information can be found here:

Careers at Haywood Academy

We use Unifrog to support our careers curriculum to help our children to explore their interests, compare Apprenticeships, FE courses and University courses, then apply successfully. We believe that our bespoke careers curriculum enhanced by the Unifrog platform will level the playing field when it comes to our children finding the best next steps for them after school and will help them to make informed decisions about their future.

Our aims are to:

• Inspire pupils to think of the future, increasing aspiration for all
• Develop and encourage a sense of ambition toward a future career
• Understand the basic skills and attitudes needed to be successful in the world of work and provide experiences of meaningful interaction with the world of work
• Provide high-quality information from a wide variety of curriculum lessons, PHSE lessons, specific career sessions and visitors from a variety of careers
• Challenge all forms of stereotype (by background, gender or diversity groups) and preconceptions
• Develop self-evaluation skills and make plans for the future
• Increase knowledge of post-16 and post-18 courses
• Understand employment-related vocabulary