If you’re following us on Facebook, or keeping up-to-date with our ‘In the Media’ page, you may have seen that Wensleydale school was recently mentioned in an article entitled ‘How to put your school at the heart of its community’ published on The Guardian Jobs’ blog. It’s all about, well, putting schools at the heart of their communities, which is something that we value very highly and strive to do. Our headteacher Julia Polley’s comments were included and are about the ways in which we open our school up to the rest of Wensleydale for their use: ‘We offer our field to the local football team over the summer, and a badminton group plays in our hall. Our facilities are available to the local community as long as the safeguarding of the students comes first – and this is not about money-making, it’s about being part of the community’. We’re always thinking about how lucky we are to have so much support from the local area, so we thought that this would be a good opportunity to share some of the reasons that we’re grateful to be so close to the Wensleydale and North Yorkshire community.
Firstly, and most simply, being supported by an incredible community such as ours helps students to develop community-based values that will stick with them for life. Wensleydale School pupils leave education knowing that they have benefited from and helped to benefit their local community and will continue to do so after they’re gone.
Another great benefit is that our being situated in such a friendly area means that the school is equipped as a safe and pleasant place for our staff and students. Aside from the obvious fact that being located in the Yorkshire Dales affords us the ability to enjoy the outdoors and work/learn in a beautiful environment, it also means that we have the peace of mind of being surrounded by kind and supportive people.
Of course, especially given the nature of our vocationally based business-school, we’re also incredibly fortunate to benefit from being well connected with local businesses, as it means we can continually support professional relationships and help our students to network early. We have an impressive number of students go straight into their chosen career path after leaving our sixth form, and a key contributor to this is our fantastic relationship with companies in our region.
So, we’re incredibly lucky to be a part of our local community and are forever grateful for the support of local businesses and community members. If you’d like to read the article we were mentioned in, you can find it on The Guardian Jobs blog, here.
