Over recent years I have delivered and demonstrated the effectiveness of the Post-16 provision at Grace Academy and I continue to work towards improving the facilities and progress of our current and future students.

There have been many changes over the past 3 years, including the common room being developed into a more sociable area, the study area ICT provision being improved and the structure of the Post-16 day being focused more towards academic progression. We truly believe that if our students are given the correct environment to work in, they will go from strength to strength both academically and socially. We understand that students need more than just great lessons to succeed and hopefully with the improvements we continue to make, student’s will continue to reach their potential, not only as academics but also as young adults.

One of the strengths we have at Grace Post 16 is the strong pastoral support system, whether that is in the form of their tutors who they see daily, Julie Baker the Post-16 Manager or our CIEAG programmes and support from our independent careers advisor William Costello. We understand that this is a big time of transition for students from adolescence to adulthood and that we need to find that fine balance between the independence they need to progress and the care, support and guidance that teenagers need to really reach their potential. Alongside the staff support, we have created a Students’ Guild that mirrors those of universities. The role of the Students’ Guild is for them to become a support for students at a peer level. The guild then becomes a link between the students and the staff and governors at Grace Academy.

We have many good and outstanding teachers here at Grace Academy and as we understand how important the progress of the post-16 students is, we make sure that they have the best teachers in front of them, who have great passion for the subjects they teach and in turn pass this on to each and every student. The teaching is slightly different at Post-16 with a greater emphasis put on independent work and teacher facilitation, we find this gives the students the right amount of input to achieve the great results we get at the end of their Year 13 studies and prepares them fully for their next steps into further education, training or employment.

There are a number of initiatives that will continue our progress, ranging from continuing the provision of IPads to students and enhancing their effective use in lessons. to help with their studies, to continuing to create new work links with our business partners, to providing students with intensive work experience that will help them to find employment in their future years, to continued improvement in examinations year on year.

Kelly Williams , Assistant Principal