Welcome to our school

Welcome to Hope Wood Academy and thank you for visiting our website and your interest in our wonderful school community.

Hope Wood Academy is a generic specialist school based in Easington, County Durham. We have a split site provision, our young people up to Year 11 are based on our main site in Easington and our Sixth Form provision is based in the Eden Hill area of Peterlee.

We cater for young people from ages 2-19 with a range of special educational needs. We are part of a larger family of four specialist schools in the North East, Ascent Academies Trust.

72% of our young people have a primary need of Autism, 18% have severe learning difficulties, 3% have moderate learning difficulties and 7% have Profound and Multiple learning difficulties (PMLD).

Our curriculum follows a pathway model based around the needs of young people. Broadly speaking- 2% of children are within our EYFS pathway, 10% within Pathway 1, 30% within Pathway 2, 31% within Pathway 3, 21% within Pathway 4 and 6% with our Sixth Form Pathway.

We are proud to have a dedicated team of professionals who are passionate about providing the very best possible educational experiences for our young people, helping each individual to grow and develop as they prepare for adulthood.

Our motto of ‘Learning Together for Lifelong Success’ encapsulates our focus on our sense of community and family. We believe that by learning together as part of the Hope Wood family we provide a supportive environment which seeks to stretch and challenge our young people supporting a personalised approach to learning and development.

We encourage our adults to engage in ‘Learning Together for Lifelong Success’ too as part of our Growing Great People strategy, we seek to support our colleagues to be the very best version of themselves through our significant investment in professional development and growth.

We are proud to be recognised at Gold Standard of The Better Health at Work Award which demonstrates our commitment to looking after our colleagues health and wellbeing at work.

We recognise that by working collaboratively in solution focused ways we can achieve so much more for our young people. We are proud to be an outward thinking school and are focused on developing a sense of ‘community’ and ‘social inclusion’ both within our school with young people and their families and externally with a range of other agencies.

Our vision recognises that we want young people to actively engaged in their local community, becoming agents of change and ambassadors for the SEND community.

We want all young people to be well prepared for life after Hope Wood. With appropriate independent advice and guidance young people may leave the academy after the end of year 11, a small proportion of young people will move into our Sixth Form provision. Individual options are discussed with young people and their families on a regular basis so they are well prepared and supported for next steps.

Traditionally young people who leave school in Pathway 1 will go onto social care settings in the local community. Young people who leave school in Pathway 2 may also go onto social care settings and some into college settings. Young people in Pathway 3 and Pathway 4 are likely to go onto college, further training and opportunities longer term for employment and/or volunteering.

We are extremely proud to be recognised as a Rights Respecting Schools Award Gold holder, everything we do focuses on ensuring our young people understand their rights and responsibilities. They are key stakeholders in running and making decisions about our school as well as influencing wider groups in the local area.

We pride ourselves on getting to know the whole family very well and working as a team for the benefit of the young people in our school, we seek to promote open communication and two way dialogue with families and want families to become part of our Hope Wood family, not just the young person who attends our school. We regularly seek and value views and opinions from families on aspects of our work so together we can do the best for our young people.

Every day is an exciting day of new learning experiences!.

Adele Pearson is our Executive Head, she works across two of our academies within our family of schools, Barbara Priestman Academy & Hope Wood Academy as well as her trust wide work and Vickie Muir is our Acting Head of Academy at Hope Wood Academy.

Everything we do is underpinned by our values of kindness, honesty and integrity which are at the heart of our Hope Wood family.

We would love to welcome you to our vibrant school community.

For more information please do not hesitate to get in touch.