Wellacre Academy

Wellacre Academy is a secondary school for boys and coeducational sixth form located in Flixton, Trafford, England that has existed since January 1955.

History

In common with other schools, Wellacre has altered considerably since its opening date. In 1966 a hall block was erected giving amongst other things, an elevated assembly hall with a stage. A rebuilding programme was completed in September 1980 to provide the modern facilities needed for a sound secondary education. Since 1995 a rolling programme of the building of new classrooms and refurbishing older ones has continued.

Wellacre Academy stands in grounds which contain eleven hectares of playing fields including an all weather cricket pitch. A full sized artificial pitch with floodlighting was completed in Spring 2005. It possesses two modern gymnasia each with a separate suite of showers and changing rooms. Its multi-gym has a wide range of modern equipment installed.

The school has seven science laboratories, many dedicated computer suites, a food technology room, a design technology workshop, a drama studio, a textiles room, a large library, a purpose built dark room and many other specialist rooms for subjects including Music and Art. Three new rooms were built for the humanities department in 2004.

Outstanding Ofsted Report

HMI Susan Waring gave an Ofsted judgement of “An Outstanding and happy school”, which has put Wellacre in an elite group of schools in England with only eleven percent of schools nationally gaining the top grade for Ofsted Inspections.^[1] The full report is available electronically from Ofsted. Recognising the high level of GCSE success, some other notable comments from the report were - “The care for the most vulnerable students is a real strength of the school.” and “The school sets very high expectations of itself and exceeds these ambitious targets.”

Facilities

The Academy is situated on the edge of the greenbelt in south west Manchester. The Academy is served by public transport, being at the focus of several major bus routes and is 15 minutes walk from Flixton railway station. Whilst serving the local areas of Flixton, Urmston and Davyhulme, the Academy also has pupils from Eccles, Irlam, Partington, Chorlton and Stretford.

There has been an investment of over £2.5 million in recent years. The academy facilities include:

• 8 refurbished Science laboratories.
• Over 650 computer nodes including specialist Macs and 7 discreet ICT rooms.
• CAD/CAM technology including laser cutters, CNC lathes, CNC routers and various industry standard software packages.
• Digital and darkroom photography studios including industry standard image editing software.
• Interactive whiteboards.
• A ‘Learning Platform’ (VLE)
• Drama studio and Expressive Arts suite.
• A dining room with a ‘cashless system’.

A new £7 million 6th Form was opened in September 2009.

School Excursions

Wellacre arrange a week-long trip to Castle Head in Cumbria in year 7 and to Inglebrough in Yorkshire in year 9.

Uniform

The uniform consists of:

• Blue V-necked Wellacre pullover with the Academy logo
• Blue Wellacre blazer with Academy logo (Years 7 - 10 only - introduced at start of 2011 term)
• Black Academy trousers
• Plain white shirt
• Black Academy shoes (no trainers or boots or shoes with white stripes)
• Wellacre Academy tie
• No jewellery is allowed

Results

GCSE

Affiliations

The school is affiliated with Ferrum High School in South Africa via the Afri Twin project. As part of the Afri Twin Scheme Mr Howell, Mr Howarth and a number of students visit Ferrum High School during the year. As part of the scheme both Wellacre and Ferrum have been twinned with Syalungelwa School, a Township School.

References

External links

• Wellacre Academy
• Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council