Personal Development

“The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is outstanding.”

Ofsted 2017

We believe that one of the most important aspects of the education that we give your child is the opportunity to experience things outside the classroom which will help to develop them personally as well as academically. Our school has a rich tradition of providing students with experiences and enrichment activities which has been recognised by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’.

Whilst we all appreciate that achieving a good set of GCSE grades is important. It is equally important, that your child grows up to become a well-rounded individual who has a wide variety of experiences to draw upon which will help them make important decisions in their lives.

As a result of this, we have introduced our students ‘Personal Development’ pledge. This is a set of nine pledges that students will make in order to develop themselves personally throughout their school career with us. These pledges cover important aspects of young persons’ development that will help your child become confident, happy, prosperous young people.

The student pledge can be downloaded from the bottom of the page.

To fulfil the nine pledges during the five years students are with us, all your child needs to do is to get involved in some of the clubs, trips, visits, school productions and many other things that go on at OSSMA. Most of these things are free to our students and can have a huge impact on the happiness, confidence and overall well-being of your child.

Your child’s attendance to before, during and after school clubs, trips, visits, enrichment activities, participation in school productions, school councils, fundraising activities and any other extra-curricular initiatives your child takes part in will be recorded. Eventually, you as a parent will receive not only an academic report during the school year but will also receive a ‘Personal Development’ report which will list all of the activities that your son/daughter has taken part in.

The activities that your children take part in will naturally fulfil many of the nine pledges but where there are gaps in your child’s experience of a particular pledge then we will provide opportunities for these pledges to be fulfilled. All that we ask, is for your support in encouraging your child to get involved in some of the amazing things that go on outside of the classroom at OSSMA.

Our Personal Development brochure below gives a more detailed overview of what we offer and why we feel the personal development of students is so important to us.

You can download a copy of the brochure from the bottom of the page.