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Harton Academy is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school and is one of several schools serving the commercial, maritime and sea-side town of South Shields.  

As part of an extensive refurbishment, Harton retained its traditional school building as well as gaining a cutting edge new building, which opened in September 2010. This houses our 6th Form Centre, together with accommodation for Mathematics, Science and Technology subjects, a Learning Resource Centre and an open plan dining area.  

Our Sixth Form has been a huge success, attracting students from secondary schools across the area. The destinations for our 6th form students is impressive, with many students being accepted into some of the leading Universities for a range of demanding courses. All students leaving the 6th Form progressed into higher education, employment or training. 

The school achieved Technology College status in 1996 and has maintained this since that time and, furthermore, as a particularly successful school, we were awarded triple specialism status from April 2007 of Languages and Applied Learning. At inspection in November 2006, our Ofsted team concluded that “Harton Technology College is an outstanding school…There are no significant areas for improvement” and the school was awarded a Grade 1 classification in all inspection areas. This classification was maintained during an interim assessment and an individual subject Ofsted inspection. With the addition of 6th Form provision, Harton was re-inspected in January 2013 and is very proud to have maintained its ‘Outstanding’ status in every category. 

The school now has a standard admission number of 271 and every year is heavily over-subscribed. In SAT and GCSE examinations, students consistently obtain results ahead of what would be expected on the basis of prior attainment and baseline testing. In recognition of our examination success, we were classified as a High Performing Secondary School by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and was awarded the Outstanding School logo by Ofsted. 

The Academy is also at the forefront of developing programmes to delivers not only high quality support for teachers and leaders at all stages of their career, but also to provide a supply of new teachers. As the lead school in the Harton Teaching School Alliance (HTSA) we continue to play a key role in teacher training with the School Direct programme and we work with a number of our partner schools to deliver this.   

Harton Academy is organised for curriculum purposes into departments. Subject Leaders are key post holders, and larger departments have Assistant Subject Leads to support them.  There are also cross-faculty Co-ordinators for Gifted &Talented/AimHigher, Careers & Employability Skills, Effective Learning, e-Learning, e-Media and Primary Liaison. 

The Academy is organised for student support (including pastoral care, PSHE and records of achievement) by form groups and year teams which are led by Heads of Year, and Assistant Heads of Year, from within our teaching staff. The majority of our teachers are form tutors and stay with their tutor group while it completes the Year 7 – Year 11 cycle. We believe the form tutor role is pivotal and we appoint teachers who possess a genuine interest in the personal and social education of students and who will develop within this role. 

As well as this, we have designated staff with responsibility for ITT, NQTs and new staff. This ensures that new teachers are properly inducted into the school and, once established, ensures that professional development is available to them. We have a team of Learning Support Assistants along with a number of HLTAs. The team, which has its own base, works closely with the Equal Opportunities Department . We also employ a team of School Support Assistants as a consequence of which, cover by teaching staff is kept as low as possible.