Haberdashers' Aske's Knights Academy has sport specialist status and a shared Federation ICT specialism.
Knights Academy became a specialist sports academy in September 2005. Since this time students have gone on to achieve sporting excellence across a range of activities at local, regional, national and international level. Every student benefits from the effects of the specialism through cross curricular learning and extensive extracurricular activities. Participating and setting such a high standard of achievement boosts esteem and aspirations of those involved thus inspiring all other students and greatly adding to the ethos of the Academy. Knights Academy moved into a new building in April 2007 with outstanding sporting facilities and equipment. So good in fact the Academy hosts and organises many sporting festivals and competitions throughout the year both for Lewisham and the South East. Facilities include:
The aim of the specialism is to positively impact and greatly enhance every students learning experience. To this end the PE department has led numerous projects such as Team Read, support for literacy, Arsenal Double club (Languages), Sport and Maths intervention days, Tour de Knights Year 8 Enrichment day and Cross Curricular themed days that have been commended nationally and used as examples of excellence by the Youth Sport Trust. Mr Robert Ellis, Ofsted Inspector, noted the positive impact in his March 2008 report “Students show an exceptional awareness of healthy lifestyles and recognise the importance of regular exercise.” The Sports Enrichment Programme at Knights Academy is outstanding and provides numerous participation and excellence opportunities. All major team games and individual activities are offered with teams entering local, regional, national and international competitions. The PE and Sport team is supported by a specialist coaches in Basketball, Rugby, Fencing and two UEFA ‘A” licence coaches who run the Football Academy. Notable achievements:
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Knights Academy has achieved the Sportsmark for the last 3 years exceeding all Youth Sport Trusts targets. As well as having numerous links with Universities both in the UK and USA (soccer/basketball scholarships) who offer degrees in the sport and leisure industry.
As a Specialist ICT Federation of Academies our aims are clear. We are committed to embracing all technology throughout our whole federation, enabling us to enhance both teaching and learning opportunities within the Federation and in the wider community within which we work. The ICT agenda has impacted on the quality of learning and teaching throughout the school. This has resulted in: a whole schools approach to using ICT as a tool for enabling interactive lessons, an improvement in student engagement and motivation, GCSE results continuing to improve(not just in ICT), greater use being made of a visual stimulus, sharing good practice, improvement in assessment and data analysis to inform teachers, students and parents.
Each learning area houses a fully networked room with a class set of Work stations, a colour, black and white printer and a flatbed scanner. Pupils have access to a wide range of software, including graphics packages such as Adobe Photoshop, and a range of industry standard Macromedia products such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks and Freehand. In addition to this, the Academy uses Microsoft Windows and each pupil has regular access to a full suite of Microsoft Office 2007 packages. The ICT system is fast and powerful enough to stream multimedia supported by a broadband Internet connection. These excellent ICT facilities are maintained by a Federation Network Manager and 10 Network Technicians.
We work with the expectation that all our students will complete a GCSE in ICT, ensuring our leavers go on with their futures feeling confident and empowered users of ICT. Our students in KS3 follow a curriculum delivered in 100 minute discreet ICT lessons developing onto a varied and exciting KS4 curriculum, with Hatcham and Knights, following a similar and complementary set of qualifications both enjoying the DIDA suite, preparing our students for today’s digital world. Following on with 6 further qualifications now offered within the Federation 6th form including the industry standard qualifications such as Microsoft office qualification, Cisco and Oracle.
We extend the curriculum offer in ICT, with strong links to other subjects, such as Music, PE and Technology, making the application and use of ICT paramount to allow for interactive classrooms, on-line access and remote access to all curriculum and teaching materials 24 hours a day. The ICT department puts Information Technology at the heart of all teaching and learning with each school having an ICT champions committee with every department represented.