Principal's Welcome
At Southway, our approach is to say ‘we will meet you wherever you are at, no matter how disconnected you feel, or how hopeless and helpless your situation seems. No matter how many other things have failed. We won't give up on you. When we are in that place with you, we will bring you with us towards these higher expectations. Step-by-step.’
Southway is an organisation that is committed to two key principles above all else: 'give hope' and 'build healthy relationships'. These are our core values. We expect to see our staff relentlessly adopt this approach, and we also endeavour to foster these qualities in the young people we serve.
We recognise that a significant proportion of the students that come to Southway have, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, been ‘let-down’ somewhere along the line, or else have found themselves stranded and at times abandoned in circumstances they cannot or do not know how to resolve. This feeling of helplessness, abandonment, of ‘not fitting-in’, often expresses itself through disengagement and challenging behaviours.
Principal
The analogy I often use, when talking to people about Southway’s work, is of a person standing on a tiny outcrop of rock, amid tumultuous ‘white-water-rapids’. Young people who feel scared, confused, powerless and overwhelmed by the circumstances and life contexts they find themselves surrounded by. Expending most of their energy just trying to keep their feet dry and their heads above water. Wrestling back some control, by any means possible, usually carries the consequence of further isolation from school, from their families, from society.
At Southway, we believe it is our singular purpose to change that reality for every student that walks through the doors. To regulate, build healthy relationships and give them tangible, credible hope.
I am absolutely thrilled to be able to work in this amazing setting, with colleagues who are artisans in the crafts of hope-giving and relationship-building and education, and to be able to witness the impact that these crafts have on the lives of the young people we serve.
I have worked at the Resilience MAT for 17 years. I have held pastoral leadership and Senior Leadership roles in a number of our mainstream academies across Leeds and Wakefield. Having joined Southway as Vice Principal in September 2021, I see, with crystal clarity, the need that our school endeavours to meet.
Dealing with significant numbers of students as they do, mainstream schools adopt as inclusive an approach to supporting children and families, as their resources will permit. I celebrate this. They do this whilst also working hard to establish high expectations of these same children and families; expectations relating to conduct, attitudes, attendance and punctuality and academic engagement and performance. What I knew in principle then, but know through lived experience now, is that not all children and families are ready for this experience of education in a mainstream setting. These expectations, in some measure, assume the existence of ready-established foundations that not all children and families have been able to develop.
Working at Southway has changed me. Slowly, but significantly.
Understanding that not all children and families have the foundations in place to be able to engage effectively with the mainstream education system, and adopting a different approach, does not amount to having low or no expectations of students. I have come to realise this. At Southway, we don't say 'you will succeed here because we will have lower expectations of you', but we also don't say, ‘these are the expectations we have, and you need to meet them’.
At Southway, our approach is to say ‘we will meet you wherever you are at, no matter how disconnected you feel, or how hopeless and helpless your situation seems. No matter how many other things have failed. We won't give up on you. When we are in that place with you, we will bring you with us towards these higher expectations. Step-by-step.’
One of the most impactful statements I have ever read was made by the CEO of Trust in the South of England. I read it during a 2016 conference I attended on the subject of Pupil Premium: Closing the Gaps. The CEO’s statement, presented as a reference, read ‘We stopped having hard-to-reach families when we stopped being a hard-to-reach school’. That is mine and my Leadership Team’s ambition for Southway: to not just be easy-to-reach, but for us to be the ones doing the reaching.
Southway is, quite simply, a unique school, an amazing alternative opportunity to start again, enabling students to reset, rebuild and succeed.
About our school
The Resilience MAT is the sole shareholder in the company called Southway. Southway is an Independent School which provides alternative provision and education for students at KS3 and KS4. We have extremely high aspirations for our young people, and we strive to give them the education and life skills they will need to move on to the next stage of their life. Every single member of staff at Southway is fully committed to raising the aspirations of every student. This raised aspiration, this hope, translates, in the majority of cases, into meaningful qualifications that will lead to relevant next steps and Post-16 pathways. Over the last six years, Southway is very proud to report that we have had no NEETs.
Southway provides alternative provision for the Trust academies and a range of schools from across Leeds and neighbouring authorities. We are situated in a ‘My Space’ building, with six classrooms, as well as a fully equipped recording studio and media suite, sports facilities and large outdoor spaces, which include a developing garden. We have developed links with other local settings to provide a broad and enriching curriculum.
We have a dedicated Multi-Agency Team and two SENDCos on site. Each student is allocated a Key Worker from the Multi-Agency Team, who liaises with the student and their family, the mainstream school and any other relevant agencies. This provides wrap-around support, ensuring every child has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.
