Harris Girls' Academy East Dulwich

Welcome to Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich. We are an outstanding school in which students achieve excellent exam results across a wide range of subject areas.

Students benefit from superb facilities including modern teaching areas, state-of-the-art IT, sports hall, health science suite and a sixth form centre.

We believe that our responsibility is to offer excellent provision that meets the needs of all those with whom we work. We are proud to be an inclusive, multi-cultural community providing inspiration and vibrancy, safety and support.

Our vision is develop students with character, commitment, courage and conscience, who become academically and personally successful and lead in their community and beyond.

Our motto is “Aspire, Learn, Succeed”. This means that we look for every member of our community to be keen to learn, to be willing to engage and to be successful in their time with us. We want our students to be aspirational; we want them to think about what they want to do with their lives, to explore the world and think about where they fit into it, what they can get from it, and what they can offer as well.

Our values:

• Fairness.
• Relationships.
• Authenticity.
• Generosity.
• Happiness.

As part of the Harris Federation, we have strong values which help to define our culture and how we do things. Our commitment to academic excellence, our determination to maintain strong values and to uphold the highest standards of behaviour and our care and support of our students are all clearly embedded.

Our curriculum continues to develop in breadth and rigour. For the vast majority of our students, a broad curriculum offer of strong academic provision is appropriate. For a small number of students, there is support available for a more refined range of options, including vocational routes as appropriate to the needs of individual students.

Our approach to learning enables students to see the relevance of their learning and experiences to the wider world. We try to give students as many different experiences and opportunities as we can – to broaden their horizons so that they begin to really understand and engage with different cultures, ideas and countries. We offer a wide range of activities and trips beyond the classroom each year and regularly survey students to ensure we are providing for their needs and for their requests.

In addition, our specialisms are a vibrant and fundamental part of our academy life and we participate regularly in Federation activities, our students working in collaboration with other high-attaining academies and enjoying a close relationship with our partner boys’ school.

We want our students to become thoughtful, caring, resilient young women whose aims are high, who believe in the importance of being life-long learners, who are equipped to lead their generation, who recognise that anything is possible and always strive to achieve their personal best. We encourage them to be studious, articulate and innovative team players who can adapt effectively to the many roles life will demand of them both now and in the future.

We hope that each of our students will leave the academy with genuine choices available to them. We believe that further education is a natural and immediate next step for most students; but whatever each young person decides to do, we want them to be equipped to be excellent in it.

Our growing sixth form works in close partnership with Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich and in federation with the Harris Sixth Form, which has Harris Westminster as part of its expanding provision, meaning that we are able to offer a top class educational experience to every student, including our very highest attainers who are aiming for Oxbridge places.

We offer a broad and balanced curriculum throughout the academy, providing students with a wide range of subjects.

Our Key Stage 3 provision is largely covered during years 7 and 8 with many subjects commencing GCSE courses at the beginning of, or during, year 9. Other than RE and non-Science component of Sex Education, all National Curriculum subjects are statutory and we cannot allow withdrawal based on religious grounds.

We offer our first set of options to students during Year 8 in readiness for them to commence their GCSE studies in Year 9.

We offer a wide range of options to students and then commit to run the most heavily selected courses, aiming to give as many students as possible their first choices. Sometimes this leads to double groups in some subjects.