The CEDARS student

Every year our students in Years 11 and 13 celebrate high academic success across the curriculum. Our results follow an upward trend year on year because we always strive for improvement and seek opportunities, both inside and beyond the classroom, to foster and develop a love of learning. We hold an annual awards evening where we are always immensely proud to celebrate our students' achievements across all areas of school life with their families.

The journey to achieving excellence begins on the first day of Year 9 with our high expectations and students' positive attitudes to learning. Students are supported in reaching their academic potential, and beyond, through a rich curriculum in Year 9 coupled with many extra-curricular opportunities. This is further developed by our broad Key Stage 4 curriculum, which enables students to select from over 25 subjects taught by our experienced subject specialists.

All our students are supported to achieve academic success through high quality teaching and the appropriate support from departments across the school who are able to offer further challenges and support. This includes our expert lecture series to enhance students' interests beyond the subjects they study, trips to universities for focused specialist subject enhancement, one-to-one tuition to support learning and study skills and small group work to develop core subject knowledge.

At Cedars, students have the opportunity to study a huge range of creative arts subjects including Drama, Dance, Music, Music Production/Technology, Fashion/Textiles, as well as Art, Photography and Media. We welcome and encourage all backgrounds and disciplines in all arts subjects and lessons aim to teach an appreciation of historically important artistic contributions as well as more modern and contemporary work. There are routes from Key Stage 3 to A Levels in all Arts areas, each with impressively high uptakes.

There is an emphasis on students' own practical work within the arts both in lessons and on an extra-curricular level. In addition to an extensive selection of lunchtime and after school clubs across each Arts department, the Creative Arts team work closely together to produce an annual musical production - the most recent performance being 'School of Rock'. In this students perform both on stage, as well as part of the pit band, though students also take lead roles in backstage management such as controlling lights and sound. This is always a massive team effort, and we look forward to welcoming anyone who is interested in getting involved in future productions!

There are also a number of performance opportunities throughout each school year, including during our charity-fundraising 'Help Week' and at student award ceremonies. We take an active role in sharing the incredible talents of Cedars students with the wider community, including with Christmas concerts and orchestra tours with lower schools, performing plays and productions to middle schools, competing against other schools at events such as 'Battle of the Bands' and working closely with musicians and artists in Leighton Buzzard when appropriate. This can include some of our fantastic ex-students, where large numbers have gone on to achieve real success in a wide range of roles across the Arts sector.

We offer Cedars Theatre Company run by our 6th form students and Cedars Dance Company. Students who participate within these activities perform within other areas of the school such as assemblies and award evenings.

We are also keen to provide further opportunities where possible, so if you are ever interested in something we don't currently offer do not be afraid to ask! In the past two years we have had a Year 9 student set up his own lunchtime Guitar Club, and this year we are due to introduce a six week DJ workshop with professional DJs for some of our Year 9 students.

Sport and Physical Education play a vital role in every child's journey during their time at Cedars. Our single aim is to engage all students in being physically active and to inspire them to make effective choices in leading a healthy, active lifestyle throughout their lives.

Our curriculum is rich and has lots of variety. Once students are in Year 10, they become more responsible for the pathway that they choose which means they are empowered to make choices about following the activities that they enjoy. The PE facilities at Cedars, including a Sports Hall, Gymnasium, Fitness Suite, 3G astro pitch and large amounts of field space, are amongst the best in the county.

For those who want to play competitive sport outside of lessons, we offer an extensive extra-curricular programme which allows students to further develop their skills, confidence and tactical awareness in a wide variety of sports. Our teams compete at a local, regional and national level. We frequently qualify for the latter rounds of national competitions and achieve high levels of success locally throughout many different activities.

At Cedars we promote the belief that reading is central to a students' success in all subjects and wider life. All our Year 9 students have regular library lessons and across our curriculum we ensure that students have meaningful opportunities to:

• read and engage with a variety of different texts both in print and on screen

• follow up their interests and read texts of varying lengths

• question and challenge printed information and views

• use reading to research and investigate ideas linked to topics being studied

• use the print and online resources in the school library to support classroom and independent learning

• read as a group and independently

• engage with texts at appropriate readability levels which cater for the range of pupils’ reading needs

• read materials which reflect a balance of culture and gender

• read texts that use specialist vocabulary (key words)

• complete homework activities which require reading