The David Ross Education Trust

David Ross Education Trust schools create a rich and exciting learning environment that inspires students to become their confident, academic best.

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Charles Read Academy

We seek to broaden the horizons of each and everyone of our students encouraging academic excellence and transferable life skills enabling all to become effective members of our 21st century society.

Enrichment

At Charles Read we provide students with a wide range of enrichment activities, which support students’ personal growth. 

Enrichment plays an important role in our curriculum at CRA. The clubs running this academic year have been carefully chosen to help develop our CRA values, our social and emotional intelligence and gain a better understanding of the wider world, giving our students a voice. Various competitions highlight citizenship issues and throughout the year pupils hold events to raise awareness of World Health Calendar special days. Being centred in a healthy and happy environment are prerequisites to academic aspirations being achieved and all our teachers are committed to developing every individual’s self-esteem, self-respect and tolerance of others’ individuality. Being a small academy allows us to nurture our students fully and challenge them to develop their confidence, resilience, ambition, courage, respect and aspiration; our CRA core values.

Our extended school days on a Monday and Tuesday allow for a range of enrichment opportunities for pupils in Year 7 to 10 to take part in enrichment. On these days students take part in Sport, Art, Musical Theatre, Bush craft, Gardening and DofE. Students also take part in life skills. During their other enrichment period students will spend a term completing a subject linked house activity, where pupils will develop their cultural capital outside of curriculum constraints and work in teams to achieve a goal. During one of the science enrichments for example, students explore the concept of being stranded on a desert island and use science to develop effective survival strategies.    

The experiences offered at CRA are not limited to those we can offer within the confines of the building, or indeed, even locally. Every year students take part in expeditions and educational visits which encompass opportunities to work on our core values: We offer all students the opportunity to experience life and University with trips to The University of Nottingham. Year 9 students visit the Houses of Parliament and debate topical issues in conference with their local MP, Year 8 students can take part in an outward bound trip and students studying a foreign language have an opportunity to venture across the channel, develop their language skills and experience the rich culture of the capital city. We believe these experiences offer opportunities to develop young people’s cultural awareness and independence so that skills encouraged within the College can be applied and improved outside their normal environment. 

 

In our position at CRA as part of a MAT we have a raft of enrichment opportunities run centrally that we can take part in, including music festivals, Shakespeare’s Schools.  

All these Trust wide opportunities sit alongside our 3 drop down days for enrichment with trips to the Houses of Parliament, University of Nottingham, ‘Staying Safe’ days etc.  

With the launch of our House system we have also added into our offer a vast amount of house competitions, that are varied and exciting as well as being focused on key pastoral areas for our academy such as attendance and behaviour. There are 40 competitions scheduled, including the 2 Trust wide house competitions. Our house assemblies focus on promoting these competitions and driving the excitement as well as delivering a 3 weekly character assembly to our students, aligned with our whole school assembly schedule. Our competitions range from limbo to university challenge and are designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to take part in something and represent their house. Our house ethos is to support and motivate and although the element of competition between the houses will be strong, students will learn to respect each other and see our academy as one community also. We also have a community outreach programme planned which features Harvest festival at the church, Remembrance service at the local war memorial, opportunities for our feeder primary schools to join in with village games, as well as organising community charity events such as Race for life

As part of our character plan, we are ensuring that all students have leadership opportunities within the academy and we are tracking this systematically to ensure all our marginal groups have access and are developing those leadership qualities. Leadership roles include; transition leaders, subject leaders, House Captains, Student voice leaders as well as E-safety and anti-bullying leaders. Lunchtime enrichment clubs are in the process of being organised and include drama, crafts, literacy, music, gardening, young carers and many more.

For further information about the enrichment opportunities that are on offer please contact:

Sport: 
Shane Ward & Alex Green

To contact us please call head office:
01476 566 801