Welcome

It is my pleasure to welcome you to Gracewood Academy, a co-educational, comprehensive 11-18 Academy set on 20 acres of beautiful grounds in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. 

Gracewood Academy is an inclusive, first choice community school that cares for and meets the needs of all its students, who achieve ambitiously as a result of great expectations and excellent teaching. We build strong character to support students to navigate the world around them so that they can lead happy, successful and healthy lives. 

We offer a highly effective, knowledge-engaged, curriculum consistently driven by the explicit teaching of vocabulary and reading. Our teaching is informed by educational research into how children acquire and retain knowledge and it is enhanced by exceptional character development. As a result, children develop skills so that they can embrace the challenges and demands of future work and life. 

Being a relatively small secondary school, we are proud of our personalised programme of support for young people. We acknowledge and break down physical, emotional and perceived barriers to success and seek to support individuals with their personal goals and ambitions. Our pastoral and mental health support is well resourced with expertise that understands the impact that nurturing a positive self-esteem can have on a child’s life chances. This, matched with the highest expectations for learning, reading and oracy as well as an ethos that promotes growth mindsets, means that all students can excel regardless of how low the starting point or how high the goal. But we don’t do this alone. We have a highly supportive parent, carer and community voice behind us and robust network of professional partners who work with us to enrich the child’s experience and ensure they thrive. 

I am immensely proud of our successes and the significant progress we have made in recent years. There have been measurable improvements across all areas of our school as well as the physical improvements from ongoing investment to our learning environment. 

Whilst I hope our website will give you a flavour of our ethos and serve as a valuable introduction to the school, Freedom through Education reminds us that there is no better way to experience the school than to come and visit and see it for yourself!  

Ms Patel, Principal