Barnhill Community High School

Barnhill Community High School is a high-performing over-subscribed secondary school and sixth form serving the community of Hillingdon. Our ethos is based upon the values of respect, wisdom, aspiration and community. Students are challenged and supported to be their best by expert and committed teachers. These values are captured by our school ethos: Together, achieving our best.

We pride ourselves in providing an exceptional, all-round education that enables each child to try everything on offer, to find out what they really enjoy and are good at.

The capacity to engage pupils at many different levels is central to education at Barnhill and we offer very high standards of learning and care; both inside and outside the classroom. Talented and committed staff work with our pupils to achieve these ends.

The school is grounded in the strength of relationships between staff, students and families that are the foundation of all great communities. Barnhill is tremendously diverse in terms of the academic and cultural backgrounds of its students and we celebrate this diversity. We very much look forward to the start of a seven-year journey educating your children in both academics and for life.

We are a Trust with great ambitions for the young people of Middlesex, ambitious for their futures, ambitious for their achievements and ambitious for their personal development. Students are at the heart of everything we do and our commitment to these values is unwavering.

In line with the ethos of the best schools in the country, our academies are always pushing the boundaries of learning and encouraging both students and staff to strive to reach their full potential.

Our mission is to ensure that students and pupils recognise the importance of learning and the transformative power that education has to level the playing field for all pupils and students. We want them to be equipped to flourish in a rapidly changing world and we want our staff to celebrate the priceless contributions they make to students’ lives.

As a growing Trust we have harnessed the synergy that comes through schools with similar values working together. Through the work done in our Trust, our academies have all become more successful and able to offer a broader range of support, collaboration and services to all of our stakeholders. Our academies have the capacity to deliver more together, united behind our common goals, our partners and commitment to the future generations of Middlesex.

We have outstanding pastoral support, not just according to us, but according to Ofsted. We give every student the support they need to be successful and feel comfortable at school. 95% of students say they are happy or very happy at school, and 97% say they have a good relationship with their teachers.

Our results are now very good, and will continue to get better each year. In 2013, 85% of students achieved 5 or more A to C grades at GCSE, with 61% including English and Maths. At A-Level, 30% of the grades were A or A*. The progress students make is excellent, or in other words, the grades students achieve relative to their starting point.

We are a truly comprehensive school which welcomes children of all abilities and backgrounds, so our headline figure may seem not as high as some “selective schools”. However, when you look beneath this headline, you can see that our students do as well, if not better, than students in any other local school.

School is preparation for life. Every student is different and will follow their own path, and our job is to prepare them for that future. We value students who want to go into work, and have strong relationships with local employers, such as FSL, and the Apprenticeship Scheme. We now have many students going to University, including those in the Global top 10 (Oxford, Cambridge and UCL). At the same time our students are also getting onto the most competitive courses such as Medicine. We have built special relationships with local Universities - Brunel, and the University of West London.

School is about more than studying. It is about personal development and maturing into a young adult. Barnhill students excel at Sport and we currently have National Champions in four separate sports. Barnhill students also excel at Leadership. Our Year 10 students, for example, run programmes in Primary Schools and have been commended by Sport England. And Barnhill students excel at developing character. Participants in the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme, World Challenge, and Prince’s Trust have been singled out for special praise.

We have a growing reputation as a Centre of Excellence for teaching. We work with many organisations to train our staff, including Teach First, Challenge Partners and the Institute of Education. Our staff now work to train and support teachers in other schools. We focus on making teaching engaging and enjoyable, as well as rigorous and focussed. We are fortunate to have an excellent and stable staff who are prepared to go the extra mile.