We believe that all children are capable of remarkable things, and we serve our community to ensure that we support our children to achieve the very best they can. We are fiercely ambitious for each one of our students. Being firmly rooted in our community, we benefit from the trust of our families. Our families support the academy to provide their children with the best possible education knowing that their children will be supported, challenged and cherished.

We believe in an academic curriculum for all students, underpinned by our values: Be Kind, Work Hard, Develop your Whole Self. We call these values our Rushey 1-2-3 expectations; they provide a framework for personal conduct and development for our entire school community. From the moment a student arrives at Rushey Mead Academy we ask them to live these expectations, so that they permeate all we do:

1 Be kind – We aim to develop respectful, accepting students who are kind to everyone.

2 Work hard – We promote resilience, perseverance and determination as qualities to be admired and rewarded at school, as they will be in life. We expect our students to respond to feedback, improve, and to never give up. Our students learn that success needs hard work and effort.

3 Develop your whole self – We expect all our students to achieve more than just academic excellence. We encourage students to develop themselves through our extra-curricular provision, so that they leave Rushey Mead Academy as well-rounded citizens with a broad range of experiences and interests. We want them to develop their leadership skills, sporting talent, musical and dramatic ability. We expect them to raise money for charity and to challenge themselves to try something new and unfamiliar. All the experiences aim to develop a whole range of skills, helping our children thrive as citizens in the wider world.

We take pride in our challenging and well-designed curriculum. At the core of our curriculum is our belief that all our students are entitled to access the best which has been thought, said, written and created in every field of human endeavour. This ensures that our young people receive a broad, rich and deep education. Uniquely, each student studies a foreign language to GCSE level, and the majority of our students study the English Baccalaureate set of subjects to GCSE level, signalling our drive to ensure all students benefit from an academic and enriching curriculum. Alongside traditional subjects, sport, music, and the arts are highly valued. This can be seen in the range of sporting clubs and achievements each year, our high-quality drama and dance productions, and our Music Scholarship programme which has enabled us to grow a sixty strong orchestra in partnership with the London Philharmonia. All of this allows our students to leave us as well rounded, happy young people, ready for success in the next phase of their lives.

Students’ safety and wellbeing is of paramount importance, so we seek to make sure that they thrive, are protected from harm, and are well-equipped to make wise choices. Our excellent pastoral support system ensures that students are helped to do their best and are happy in school. Students feel safe, nurtured, and supported.

We are tremendously proud of our students. As Rushey students, there is nothing they cannot achieve.