We are a small and family oriented 11-18 school with just under 600 students in the main body of the school and just over 100 in our Sixth Form. Having once been a much larger school we now enjoy an enviable amount of space and small class sizes, both of which help contribute to the calm and purposeful atmosphere around the site. The school takes enormous pride in its place in the community. All of our governors are parents of students who attend or have attended our school. Local artists work in the school, our students engage in extensive community work (be it running our annual Elderly Friends Christmas Dinner, supporting the Lantern Parade or doing outreach work with Community Arts) and the school itself is striving to become a Solar School, thereby extending the considerable work already done in the New Mills community with regard to renewable energy. We also set great store in being an inclusive, comprehensive school. It is our intention to equip our students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for them to take an active, enquiring and, we hope, successful role in our increasingly complex society. To do that, we put great emphasis on developing all aspects of our students' growing characters, valuing their extra-curricular and vocational achievements every bit as much as their academic successes. We believe that education should be fun, challenging, creative and rewarding. And we believe that often means taking risks, sometimes getting things wrong but always learning by doing - and we can do that best within a supportive and caring environment where everyone is valued for their efforts and achievements.