School Aims and Ethos
For Students
- to enjoy their time here; to be happy, engaged and safe every day
- to be the best prepared they can be for a life leading into the 22nd century; including having the best possible access to technology and to be provided with the skills & knowledge to harness it effectively for the rest of their lives
- to maximise their potential to thrive in an uncertain and challenging world by developing skills and attributes which truly support; lifelong learning, independence, curiosity, creativity and adaptability
- to be developed as whole people, with the curriculum always driving human outcomes in order to support mentally and physically healthy and fulfilling futures
For Staff
- to be well supported by technology and facilities to afford every possible efficiency and reduction in workload
- to have a conducive, comfortable and pleasant working environment, and a culture of looking after each other, which supports them and their students to be their best
- for the curriculum they deliver to be exciting, meaningful and aligned to the agreed moral purpose in outcomes for students
- for our school to be a centre of leadership development, opportunity and futures thinking to launch, enhance and give deep satisfaction and enrichment throughout education careers
For Families and Stakeholders
- to make Baycroft and its future vision so compelling that stakeholders find engagement irresistible
- to ensure that Baycroft is always a safe, optimistic and exciting place which families and friends are proud to be a part of
- to have a level of pedagogical excellence and evidence based practice which leads the way for other schools and provides a resource for them to draw on for other young people
- to send out young people from our school who seek to enrich and enhance their communities; in return, young people being able to draw on their communities for support when needed without being demeaned
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Our whole community takes equality, diversity and inclusion very seriously indeed. All of our students, our staff and governors receive training on the Equality Act and commit to living by it as a fundamental aspect of our values, not merely abiding by it. We actively recruit people who are committed to celebrating the beauty and richness of a diverse community – and we make it quite clear that people who do not have these values will not be a good fit for our school.
Our staff and students have written their own respective codes of conduct, incorporating the Equality Code, and hold each other to account using inclusive nudges, to ensure that the language we use is always as appropriate and inclusive as possible.
Our young people know all about diversity, and start by celebrating their own neurodiversity – a term they understand and use proudly. We have an equality, diversity and inclusion steering group who have been meeting since 2021 to create, enact and share ambitious plans which enable our school to reflect our commitment to inclusion ever more tangibly and measurably. This serves to foster not just good but great relations and allyship between people who share protected characteristics and people who do not.
We encourage our students to collaborate with their peers in our neighbouring school to explore and celebrate intersectionality and shared experiences. Our curriculum is ever more representative and actively seeks to usualise the protected characteristics. When we make strategic decisions and design or review policies, we carefully consider who it affects and how, systematically considering the protected characteristics alongside other factors which may lead to advantage and disadvantage.
We have robust policies in place for both conduct and practice to ensure the dignity and equality of opportunity of every member of our community. We challenge ourselves to seek out any areas of inequality and to improve them. This is articulated in our:
We work to the joint professional association guidance when making provision for transgender students: https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Guidance-for-maintained-schools-and-academies-in-England-on-provision-for-transgender-pupils.pdf
We are also signatories to the Halo Code for schools: https://halocollective.co.uk/halo-school/
