We keep the main thing the main thing
At Ark Acton we have stripped away anything we feel gets in the way of being a great teacher so that we can focus on the main thing. This includes:
- Feedback policies that sit at department level and do not require slavish marking of books
- No graded lesson observations or spurious judgements
- No report writing
- No parent’s evenings
- Only 2 data points a year
- No ½ termly data metrics to track progress
- Protected Department meeting time built into the timetable and staff loadings
- Protected curriculum planning time built into the timetable and staff loadings
- A constant SLT presence to maintain our calm, scholarly atmosphere
- A binary behaviour system that enables disruption-free teaching.
We invest in your career and your development
We are heavily committed to staff welfare and development and this includes:
- weekly evidence-led staff training and no fads
- Coaching for every teacher with fully trained coaches
- Every member of staff has a personal development pathway to help ensure they have the feedback and space necessary to keep improving
- A team of expert Lead Practitioners to offer in-depth support and guidance
- Access to training programmes and Masters from Ark and Ambition Institute
- free use of our leisure centre
- access to the school counsellor
- weekly anonymous staff survey.
We put the curriculum at the centre
We place the curriculum – what we teach – at the heart of the academy and it informs all decisions we make. We are looking for someone who shares our belief in disciplinary thinking and who will help improve and refine our curriculum thinking. In the words of Alex Standish we believe that “school subjects then are a way of inducting children into the intellectual habits of humankind, and hence into a disciplinary conversation about knowing our world” and we are looking for someone who shares this belief to join our team.
We invest heavily in allowing staff to become curriculum experts and members of the SLT are regular speakers on curriculum design and implementation.
See our approach to curriculum thinking here - https://arkacton.org/academic-curriculum
See our approach to assessment here - https://arkacton.org/assessment
