At Orchard Mead Academy all students, staff and parents share a common vision to Make a Positive Difference.

This underpins everything we do and will help us to achieve the best outcomes for all students.

At Orchard Mead Academy we work together to Make A Positive Difference:

To ourselves – we support students to aim for the highest standards, not just in lessons and examinations, but also in extra-curricular activities. We encourage them to consider their behaviour and to understand how this behaviour makes a positive difference to them and their future prospects. Every individual truly matters and we support them to be the best they can be.

To others – students at Orchard Mead Academy are encouraged to consider their place in society and to understand what it means to be a good citizen. The academy is involved in charitable activity and students participate in fundraising for good causes as well as actively helping others. The development of leadership skills for students is a new focus for the academy through our student leadership scheme.

To our world – every day we encourage all members of our learning community to respect their surroundings and make sustainable choices for the future. We take collective responsibility to make Orchard Mead Academy, Leicester and the wider world a better place.

Our daily values support Orchard Mead Academy to be a welcoming, safe place.

Through our vision and values we are working together to:

  • Inspire a love of learning
  • Achieve excellent outcomes for students
  • Ensure the well-being of students
  • Instill a strong moral and ethical code
  • Develop outstanding educational professionals.

Our values are expressed to students using the following language:

  • We value always doing the ‘right thing’ and taking responsibility for our own behaviour
  • We value always showing respect and helping others
  • We value always being fair and being honest
  • We value always trying our best and working hard
  • We value always being tolerant of other people’s beliefs

Values

The Mead Educational Trust and its academies have developed the 7Cs as their guiding principles: Challenge; Collaboration; Culture; Creativity; Community; Courage and Character.

At Orchard Mead Academy this means:

  • We will have high expectations of achievement so that pupil attainment and progress are among the best in Britain.
  • We will work with the best educational knowledge – nationally and internationally – in order to create a world-class curriculum.
  • We will provide a respectful and orderly environment, where teachers can focus on teaching and students can focus on learning. We will teach, recognise and reinforce excellent behaviour.

  • We will encourage our pupils to work both collaboratively and independently.
  • We will benefit from the shared best practice and challenge of The Mead Educational Trust academies and national organisations.
  • We will provide strong and flexible shared central services enabling schools to focus time and resources on teaching.

  • We will ensure that our teaching is excellent and that our pupils benefit from traditional, high-quality learning experiences.
  • We will inspire a passion for lifelong learning.
  • We will deliver a knowledge-rich curriculum, structured by an emphasis on traditional EBacc subjects: English; maths, science; languages; and humanities.

  • We will work with our community to ensure that we have a common set of values that unite and bring us together to work towards developing a community of excellence.
  • We will ensure that the health and wellbeing of pupils and staff underpin our community.
  • We will build strong links with businesses to support the development of enterprise skills and to ensure our pupils are highly employable.

  • We will instil a strong moral and ethical code, incorporating British values and enabling our pupils to safely navigate the world and make the right decisions.

  • We will generate and define new and innovative standards of educational excellence.
  • We will ensure that all pupils will be able to access a wide range of curricular and extracurricular experiences in creative arts, sport, computing and design technology.
  • We will actively counter disadvantage in order to increase social mobility through engagement in a curriculum which improves artistic, social and cultural capital.

  • We will have a clear focus on developing key characteristics – honesty, integrity, compassion, kindness, self-belief, resilience and mutual respect in all our pupils.
  • We ensure our pupils are highly employable by developing key skills, attributes and habits through our whole curriculum so that they gain and sustain a rewarding career.