Welcome to Harbour Vale School
We work with young people between the ages of 11 and 16 from North Dorset who are unable to attend school full-time.
We are a short stay alternative provision for students who have been permanently excluded from mainstream education, for students who may be at risk of permanent exclusions(dual registered), students who have specific medical needs and students who need SEND assessments from Year 7-11, located in Sherborne, North Dorset.
Harbour Vale prides itself on having a child-centred approach and we base all of our communication on our school ethos of:
- Believe, Achieve, Succeed
- Building Respect, Responsibility, Resilience
The majority of students arrive with significant gaps in their learning – we aim to tackle their barriers to learning before challenging them on their academic achievements.
We provide students with the right support and interventions to allow students to be successful, build self-confidence, become more resilient, with a broad and balanced curriculum, alongside a range of activities and opportunities that support them to re-integrate and engage back in mainstream education or a specialist school settings, or move on to college or an apprenticeship with the correct academic achievements enable this to happen.
We are a ‘trauma informed school’ and approach all students with these practices. We will support the students with their emotional literacy, mentoring opportunities, sports coaching, anger management, emotion coaching, mental health first aid, sensory opportunities and family workshops.
All of the above is to ensure our students get supported with all aspects of school life, academically and emotionally to become resilient and independent learners who can manage their own behaviour, emotional and ultimately the next step in their young lives.
We offer the National Curriculum, GCSEs, ELCs, Unit Awards and a very rich and varied non-academic curriculum. We aim to help our students back into school or on to further education, work or training.
Harbour Vale School was previously called Sherborne Learning Centre, but changed it’s name on the 1st November 2019 when it became an academy and joined Sherborne Area Schools’ Trust.