Every year since opening, we have been oversubscribed. We understand there are many parents who passionately want their child to have a place at XP. However, as a school with a deliberate size of 50 students per year, we cannot allocate places for all children that apply.

Our oversubscription method for allocating places is a random selection. We can think of no fairer way of doing this. Our whole admissions process is carried out independently by the Local Authority.

If you have not been allocated a place through the admissions process, your child will be placed on our waiting list. If a place becomes available, then the Local Authority will apply our admissions policy and if oversubscribed, will allocate this place randomly from the waiting list.

This ensures every child has just as much chance as every other child, which is the fundamental basis of our policy.

Every parent has a right to appeal an admissions decision, and you will be notified by the Local Authority how to do this.

Unfortunately, as we are a deliberately small school, we have a specific amount of 50 places each year, and no more. Everything about our school is designed around this number; our school building, our classrooms, our curriculum and countless logistical systems.

We believe our admissions policy, being based on a random process carried out independently of the school by the Local Authority is the fairest way possible we can allocate these places.

As such, we do not know of any reason a parent could give to prove that what we do is not fair and carried out correctly.

Above this, we see any parent trying to use the appeals process to bias this fair and correct process as being totally unfair to the school, to the students that have been allocated a place, and to the parents who respect our admissions policy by accepting the admissions process and stay on our waiting list without appealing.

Our school would be severely hampered by an appeal allowing more than our Pupil Admission Number. Therefore we will protect our school and admissions policy as rigorously as possible and as a Trust, and we are willing to use all legal avenues possible to do this, including the High Court.

While we understand the disappointment parents feel if they are not allocated a place, we ask all parents to respect our admissions policy and accept the admission decision.

We are a mainstream Secondary School with extremely high expectations of our students.

Our curriculum is therefore highly academically rigorous and we have high expectations for all our students to be able to go to university. We expect all our students to work extremely hard to this end.

We are an inclusive school and therefore we try our best to support students with SEN. However, we do not segregate our students according to ability or any other measure and we do not offer an alternative curriculum provision. Therefore all our expedition classes are for 25 students, and no less.

We expect all our students to work hard, get smart and be kind.

If you think your child, considering their needs, will flourish in this environment, we would be happy to talk to you as to how we might be able to support their needs.

We urge parents of children with SEN to visit our school before considering applying to understand our complete offer and to not assume that because we are a small school, we will suit your child.

Students will study through cross-subject learning expeditions until January of Year 11. This will provide our students with a broad and balanced curriculum. As a consequence of this, our approach to GCSEs is that our students will take a core of GCSEs, then a personal choice.

The core GCSEs that all our students will take are:

• English Language
• English Literature
• Mathematics
• Science (Double Award)
• History
• Spanish
• Art

Students will then have a personal choice where they can choose any other appropriate GCSE and study this with guided help, such as Computing, PE, Triple Science, Music, an additional language, Design & Technology, Geography, Economics, Psychology, Drama etc.

Some students may have the capability and capacity to do more than one Choice GCSE.

The reasoning behind our approach is that the core GCSEs offer an academically rigorous blend of subjects that will be covered within our learning expeditions, and the personal choice offers a specific route that they may want to follow towards A Level and beyond.

Our expeditionary curriculum at Key Stage 4 is much broader than the eight Core GCSEs and will cover other subject areas, such as music, computing, design & technology, geography etc.

The core GCSEs cover the English Baccalaureate with the addition of Art. They are also ‘gateway’ qualifications, meaning that students will be able to study any subject post 16.

Provision for alternative GCSEs may be put in place if we deem that a student is better served this way.

We have the highest expectations for all students. The aim for our high ability students is to produce work that is indistinguishable from that of a professional.

As such, there is no ceiling to the work they produce.

In addition to this, many academically gifted students find the social and creative aspects of our curriculum extremely challenging.

Our aim is for students not just to pass their exams, but to become the best version of themselves.

We offer a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities to learn. From football, rugby and hockey with Doncaster Rovers staff, to music, computing and many other after school clubs, a number of which have been facilitated from the suggestion of our students.

As well as Outward Bound, we start the Duke of Edinburgh Award in Year 9, allowing our students to lead their own learning in a voluntary, skill and physical form, in addition to the outdoor expeditions.

Our school is open until 4:30pm for extended study and extra-curricular activities every day.

XP was established as a ‘Free School’, which is a normal school, funded directly by the Department for Education. Once established, all Free Schools become Academies.

All Secondary Schools in Doncaster are Academies, and XP has the same statutory requirements as every other school. The same funding, admissions, Ofsted, examinations etc.

The only difference is that we were set up by an independent organisation, the XP School Trust, rather than historically by the Local Authority.

Learning expeditions are academically rigorous, standards-based, cross-subject projects that involve research, problem-solving, community engagement and result in students creating a product as close to a professional quality as possible.

The best way to understand this is to look at our expeditions here.

You can look at hundreds of other projects by following the links on our Example Projects page as well.

Free schools, like academies do not have to employ qualified teachers. All secondary schools in Doncaster are academies, and we have the same statutory requirements.

However, we have as high expectations of our staff as we do our students, and our expectation is that all our teachers engage in masters level professional development.

We have not employed an unqualified teacher in our first three years, but if we ever do, they would have had to have demonstrated outstanding practice, and would immediately be placed on a professional development programme to become a qualified teacher.

One of our founders, Gwyn ap Harri, was first employed as an unqualified teacher at Hatfield High School (now, Ash Hill Academy) in 2000, and qualified to Headship level (NPQH) in 2011.

We are proud to say that Mrs Chappell started with XP as a Learning Coach in 2014, and is now an NQT Physics teacher in 2016.

Like all secondary schools, XP will be inspected by Ofsted and accountable directly to the DfE. We have the same statutory requirements as all other schools.

Like all new schools, our first Section 5 Ofsted inspection will be in our third year, so will happen at any time from September 2016.

We have already had a number of Ofsted inspectors in our school, both invited and from the DfE as part of our formation as a new school, and although we are not allowed to share these reports, they have all been extremely positive.

We expect our first inspection judgement to be Outstanding.

At XP we follow the same methods as a number of schools in the USA have been doing for over twenty years. High Tech High and Expeditionary Learning schools have been incredibly successful, with the evidence showing that they outperform their district equivalent schools across many measures.

http://elschools.org/our-results/academic-achievement

http://www.hightechhigh.org/about/results.php

As teachers, we have experienced this for ourselves, and have established sustainable relationships with HTH and EL that allows us to draw upon their knowledge and experience.

Our aim, like HTH and EL is that 100% of our students are able to go to university.