News Stories

Harris Academy Rainham has successfully applied for accreditation in Transforming Practice in Effective Learning Behaviours, awarded by SSAT, the schools, students and teachers network.

This means that our school has met the highest standards of the Framework for Exceptional Education and that our work in this area is amongst the most effective practice nationally.

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Principal Gareth Stananought on what achieving the Transforming Practice in Effective Learning Behaviours award means for Harris Academy Rainham.

We have been working on embedding effective learner behaviours for the last few years in our school as we believe this is of utmost importance to the community we serve.

Our values of ‘Belong, Believe, Become’ emphasise the
importance we put on our students becoming ‘profoundly human’ and having real choice- ‘our students can reach any university or career they choose’. This has made the embedding of effective learner behaviours such as self regulation, metacognition, and study skills, as well as attributes such as kindness, empathy and respect.

To do this, we have adapted our approach to teaching and learning, and to behaviour. We explicitly teach students study skills and metacognition so that they can become self-aware, self-regulatory and independent.

We also explicitly teach behaviour so that students can learn to adapt in different social settings and learn the importance of attributes such as kindness, respect, and assembly. Much of this comes from our tutor time curriculum and our assemblies. We also give students many opportunities to develop their leadership behaviours, through our ambassador groups who have all had a big impact in improving the school, such as our LGBTQ+ ambassadors, anti-racism ambassadors, eco ambassadors and more.

Additionally, we have been keen to develop our staff leadership and learner behaviours through our research-led approach to teaching and learning and our many leadership opportunities including NQPs and various middle leadership training programmes.

During both our peer review and our moderation visit, we had the opportunity to showcase the work we have been doing as a school over the last few years. Our peer review commented on being particularly impressed by our research informed approach to the explicit teaching of behaviour and our interesting approach to student leadership
with our ambassador groups.

During our moderator visit, Anthony mentioned how our approach and strategies are all clearly tied into our values, and again commented on the research informed approach to this. Both our peer review and moderation visit also commented on the fact we have lots of ex-students returning to our school to tutor younger year groups, suggesting the success in ‘developing the attitudes we value’.

We thoroughly enjoyed being part of this process as it gave us an opportunity to showcase what we are proud of and reflect on the work we have done and our next steps. Our peer review process allowed us to really reflect on how we are adapting some of our teaching of behaviours to SEN students. Next year our focus will remain on rolling out our personal development strategy and creating even more student ambassador groups to give more students an opportunity for leadership.

Gareth Stananought, Principal