We will enable the children and young people who prepare for and attend our Academies, with their parents or carers and wider families, to participate in learning and develop skills and attributes necessary to participate fully in the local, regional, national and emerging global economies, whilst maintaining a sense of place, citizenship, and commitment in their community, with environmental and social responsibility, where all will see the United Kingdom as a great place to live, work, and visit.
‘We have nine million highly qualified workers in Britain - but the challenge of the next ten years is that we will need fourteen million, five million more. Higher standards of living will depend on higher standards of learning.’
Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister
Through this federation we hope to build Academies of the future by developing a working model of how learning can take place in the new era. The UK’s competitiveness depends on every citizen contributing to the success of the country. Already we have seen demographic trends which show that we now have more people over sixty years of age than we have young people under sixteen.
This means that we can no longer tolerate or support the ten thousand young people each year who fall out of the education system by the age of fourteen and become yet another Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) statistic by the age of nineteen. This new era has seen a shift in the balance of world trade with the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China)countries having greater access to ever diminishing world resources.
The need to develop highly qualified and skilled workers in the UK will be increasingly important. We need to develop a workforce that is creative, innovative, risk taking and capable of self-starting. We need more and more young people who can compete on the world stage, free from bureaucracy and free to generate new ideas, industries and concepts all of which are crucial for the wealth of our country.
Our federation of Academies will embrace new technologies in world class learning facilities, building on the best practice and experiences that each of the previous schools has developed over a number of years. By sharing common standard operating procedures, frameworks and policies we will be developing Academies that can lead an educational evolution rather than revolution on their way to sustainable high performing status.
Innovation at Greensward College has been a fundamental driver in helping us raise standards. By releasing the collective ambitions, aspirations and desires to achieve world class outcomes that is in all of us we will be offering a model of education that is sustainable, relevant, exciting and engaging but most of all effective in playing its part in developing world class citizens. Each and every one of us has a vital part to play to ensure the success of this venture.