Nightingale Community Academy

We are meticulous in our attempt to know and understand the needs of our boys so that we can deliver expert management and teaching of behaviour to facilitate high quality learning experiences. We work with community and family to deliver a curriculum that is varied, stimulating and sympathetic to the complex needs experienced by the children in our care.

We take pride in the development of young people who can take the knowledge and experiences we provide into the next phase of their education or training. We aim to instil community values that enable boys to live healthy and fulfilling lives; certain in the knowledge that they have developed the skills and independence necessary to engage fully in an ever more connected and challenging world.

Our vision is for Nightingale Community Academy students to leave school as confident learners and participative citizens, having gained the skills, qualifications and attributes that will enable them to take their place in wider society.

Our mission is to provide education, support and guidance that enable students to Learn and achieve, Fulfil their academic potential, Be included in society, Overcome their barriers to learning, Behave and interact appropriately with others, adult and peers and Make appropriate choices.

A code of conduct for the way we live together in our school community is drawn up with the children in each classroom and regularly reinforced. The following is our constitution throughout the school. This is shared with parents/carers and students respect myself and others and treat everyone with kindness, keep myself and others safe, make good choices that help me to learn, be in the right place at the right time, ask for help and Stop think and then act responsibly.

Nightingale Community Academy provides students with a curriculum which is broad and balanced, but is also adapted to suit their specific needs. Students come to Nightingale with very different levels of prior education. Many have been out of school or out of the classroom for a significant period of time before they gain a place at Nightingale; all students have one or more Special Educational Need which has hindered their learning in the past, and there are often significant gaps in their learning as a result. Our curriculum, therefore, aims to close these gaps, particularly in the key skills of literacy and numeracy, whilst ensuring that we open the mind of our students to a wide range of knowledge and experiences which will help them to define and achieve their ambitions.

At Nightingale Community Academy we take pride in challenging all students to strive for academic, creative, sporting and personal accomplishment within a broad, vibrant and enriched curriculum. As well as focusing on the National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 and 2, the primary school aims to equip all of its students with the skills necessary to for success.

At Key Stage 3, students follow the current National Curriculum but, as in the Primary School, the emphasis is on ensuring that students strengthen their literacy and numeracy skills (students have daily sessions in addition to their English and maths lessons) to support their progress across other areas of the curriculum, and to support their move towards independence, both in their learning and their daily lives.

The Nightingale Community Academy curriculum at Key Stage 3 is thematic, which allows teachers to plan and adapt lessons to meet the individual needs and interests of the students. Although English, maths and science are taught discretely, teachers provide rich opportunities for cross-curricular writing, scientific exploration and applied numeracy skills within the themed topic lessons. Creating and highlighting meaningful links between these core areas of learning and the topic theme provides opportunity for progression in both breadth and depth of learning.

In Key Stage 4, all students continue to study English and maths daily and are entered for suitable qualifications in these core subjects; for the vast majority of our students this is the GCSE, however for some students this may be a Functional Skills or Entry Level Certificate. In addition to English and maths, there is a broad range of qualifications on offer. Most of our students in Years 10 and 11 will study for the History GCSE and will continue with Science to GCSE, BTEC or Entry Level.

Many of our students stay on roll at Nightingale Community Academy for the Sixth Form. The school is able to offer a full time provision for students, or they may choose to study a course at a local college for a number of days each week and attend Nightingale for pastoral support or for extra help with English, maths or coursework.

The full time offer is comprised from a combination of the following qualifications, tailored to the needs of the student, English and maths GCSE resits (some students may be sitting these exams for the first time if they have not previously been entered) or Functional Skills qualifications where these are more appropriate to the student’s needs and abilities.