Thank you for taking the time to express your interest in us. 

We are a very special school that aims to serve the community, improve opportunity for our community and also reflect our community through our diverse and ambitious curriculum, as well as through our diverse staff and student bodies. We hope that you, too, feel that specialness when you visit us, a specialness that encompasses care and compassion, a genuine delight in children’s contributions and a drive towards “success for everyone”.

We have a long and proud history, having educated boys for over 100 years: we have been a technical school, reported as the most improved boy’s school in the country, a community school and now an academy, a single school and now the founding ‘brother’ to our sister school, Woolwich Polytechnic School for Girls. We have year-on-year exam results at GCSE and A Level that make us, our students and their families rightly proud. Yet our relentless focus is upon the futures of our current students as we counsel them through their educational careers to be the most successful version of themselves.

To support your son through their secondary education, we have firm foundations in exemplary pastoral care and expert teaching. Safeguarding our students is the absolute priority that informs the behaviours we demonstrate in the staff and student bodies. Our pastoral care and personal development programme are child-centred, empathetic to individual children’s needs, recognising their challenges and assisting with overcoming them. We care; we listen; we understand context and we actively build meaningful relationships with every child.

Our teaching is equally child-centred, offering support and challenge as required to ensure that all our students achieve the grades they need to pursue the courses and careers they aspire to with confidence. Our curriculum is designed so that students can make interconnections between the various subject disciplines, hence stimulating a culture of curiosity and questioning so that all our boys leave us as well-rounded, caring members of the community, ready to navigate the adult world safely, critically and knowledgeably.

We also recognise that child development is enhanced through pleasure and we therefore cater for their personal interests with an extensive enrichment programme, including wellbeing days, our Activities Week, curriculum and reward trips and a variety of clubs. There are always opportunities for your son to have their voice heard, whether through the Student Council or more informal feedback to tutors, teachers and head of year or our dedicated student voice co-ordinator. I am confident that you will have made the right choice for your son by privileging us with his care, education and personal development so welcome to the Poly family.

Mr T Lawrence
Headteacher