Outwood Academy Danum
- Outwood Academy Danum
Armthorpe Road
Doncaster
South Yorkshire
DN2 5QD - Head: Mrs Amanda Crane
- T 01302 831385
- F 01302 300109
- E [email protected]
- W www.danum.outwood.com
- A state school for boys and girls aged from 11 to 18.
- Boarding: No
- Local authority: Doncaster
- Pupils: 1163
- Religion: None
-
Ofsted:
- Latest Overall effectiveness Good 1
- 16-19 study programmes Good 1
- Effectiveness of leadership and management Good 1
- 1 Full inspection 29th November 2018
- Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report
What the school says...
This is one of the largest schools in the UK with nearly 2000 students including over 400 in the sixth form, 139 full or part time teachers and over 100 support staff.
The school is an 11 to 18 Community Comprehensive school serving the eastern inner urban area of the town of Doncaster in South Yorkshire. The school is on two sites, one kilometre apart. The Leger Way site houses the Lower School and caters for 900 students in key stage Three. The Upper School on Armthorpe Road houses 600 key stage 4 students and the sixth form. Both buildings were extensively refurbished and extended in a 1995- 7 reorganisation.
The school has a well deserved reputation for social inclusion and has received considerable media interest as a school with good practice. This is centred on the provision of two high quality Learning Support Centres which offer a high level of educational support to a variety of students with special needs including a cohort of able and talented students. The school is also totally equipped for children with physical disability using ramps and lifts and has a large number of wheelchair bound children on roll who are able to access mainstream lessons.
The sixth form offers a wide range of AS, A2 and vocational courses. Nearly 30 subjects are studied to Advanced level and the schools results in this area are regularly amongst the highest in the region and in the top 500 state schools nationally.
In 1995 OFSTED rated sixth form education here as amongst the best it had ever inspected.
The school has a good reputation for its business and community links and these were rated as outstanding by OFSTED. The school has a thriving partnership with local business leaders known as the Danum 50 and industrialists and business leaders work within the school and its curriculum to develop linked activities. Once a COMPACT school, the school was chosen to pilot a Pathways to Working Life project with the DfES and the then Department for Employment. Currently the school has been chosen by DfES and the Learning and Skills Council to lead a Pathfinder Project in South Yorkshire based upon the Open Campus principle of meeting the needs of young people in the 14 to 19 area.
The school achieved the Charter Mark a record three times in 1995,1999 and 2002 owing to the excellent service it provides for its community. The school has also gained the Sportsmark Award and the School Achievement Award in 2001-2 for improving test and examination results.
The school strongly believes in European and international links and has a network of twinning arrangements with other schools around the world. There is an innovative post 16 entitlement to European work experience in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland and teachers and students are encouraged to take part in exchange schemes with schools in our twinned network. In 1997 the school was awarded the status of International School by the British Council and was honoured to be chosen as one of twenty UK schools to feature in the UK Presidency European Resource Pack for British schools as an example of good practice. The school was awarded the National Languages for Export Award in 1999 in recognition of its international links. The school is host to a Chinese school at weekends.
The school joined the Excellence in Cities initiative in 2001 and receives substantial funding under this programme. Part of the schools catchment area lies within the central Doncaster New Deal for Communities project and as a result receives generous resourcing as part of the regeneration of the community.
Danum was delighted in its bid to become a specialist Technology College in 2002 under the Governments flagship initiative. The school has already felt the effect of Technology College status, funded upon ICT, in helping it to gain much needed extra resources and enhance its drive to improve achievement at all levels. The new Danum School Technology College, one of the first three specialist Colleges in Doncaster and a member of the Technology Colleges Trust, expects to use its new status to develop better community and specialist facilities as well as support in key curriculum areas.
The school has been inspected twice in 1995 and 2000 and twice received good reports that it was a good, effective school that provides a good standard of education. The school has featured extensively in the local and national media, on local radio and on regional and national TV. This popularity has attracted several high profile visitors to the school including Carol Vorderman, TV star, John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, David Blunkett, Secretary of state for Education, Lord Dearing , Rodney Bickerstaffe, Trade Union leader and Professor Michael Barber, Head of the DfES Standards and Effectiveness Unit as well as numerous sporting personalities, MPs, and European MEPs
Converted to an academy 2011. ...Read more
This is not currently a GSG-reviewed school.
Do you know this school?
The schools we choose, and what we say about them, are founded on parents’ views. If you know this school, please share your views with us.
Please login to post a comment.
Overall school performance (for comparison or review only)
Results by exam and subject
Subject results
Entry/Exit
Special Education Needs
Danum is a large mixed split site comprehensive: we have a special school for pupils with profound difficulties between our 2 sites, we were built with lifts, disabled toilets; and before the inclusion agenda, Doncaster LEA transported all PD pupils to us. For these reasons, we have a vast experience of all sorts of physical, behavioural and learning disabilities, and a large army of fantastic LSAs, trained in eg: moving and handling, who specialise in different aspects of SEN, eg: behaviour, VI,HI, autism, etc. Pupils at Danum are accustomed to difference and diversity: we strive to ensure our ethos encourages all pupils to work together, to support each other, to understand each others differences. SEN is important to all staff, teaching and support. We believe that we are a very caring department, determined to treat all pupils as individuals: we are a school that is willing and able to adjust the school's systems and structures so that pupils can access our curriculum, reach their full potential, academically but also with extra-curricular. Through dialogue with parents, pupils, internal support, and external support agencies, we are willing to work hard, together, to include everyone. We value the close links we have built up with the local support eg hearing and visual impairment services, behaviour support, autistic spectrum support. All pupils are included on trips, visits, extra-curricular, and we are working hard to be an accessible and an inclusive school. We are particularly proud of our disabled athletics team which always sends qualifiers to the national finals in Blackpool. We are also proud of our success with pupils who join us with low literacy levels: 4 qualified teaching staff work hard with small withdrawal groups to raise reading, comprehension and spelling ages, so pupils can access the mainstream curriculum asap. Success is when they don't need us anymore!
| Condition | Provision for in school |
|---|---|
| ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder | |
| Aspergers | |
| Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders | |
| CReSTeD registered for Dyslexia | |
| Dyscalculia | |
| Dysgraphia | |
| Dyslexia | |
| Dyspraxia | |
| English as an additional language (EAL) | |
| Genetic | |
| Has an entry in the Autism Services Directory | |
| Has SEN unit or class | |
| HI - Hearing Impairment | Y |
| Hospital School | |
| Mental health | |
| MLD - Moderate Learning Difficulty | |
| MSI - Multi-Sensory Impairment | |
| Natspec Specialist Colleges | |
| OTH - Other Difficulty/Disability | |
| Other SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty | |
| PD - Physical Disability | |
| PMLD - Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty | |
| SEMH - Social, Emotional and Mental Health | |
| SLCN - Speech, Language and Communication | |
| SLD - Severe Learning Difficulty | |
| Special facilities for Visually Impaired | |
| SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty | |
| VI - Visual Impairment |
Interpreting catchment maps
The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.
Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.
For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained
Further reading
If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.
Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.
Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.
*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.
The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.
Children get into the school from here:
regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year
The Good Schools Guide newsletter
Educational insight in your inbox. Sign up for our popular newsletters.