Being a specialist college means that we have certain responsibilities in certain subjects. Our specialist status requires us to fulfil these responsibilities in, Applied Technologies and Mathematics and as a result they are very wide ranging.

We intend to be the hub of activities for the local community in these subject areas linking with local junior schools and the community we intend to provide a range of services to meet the needs of the local community. These services could range from extra classes to get our students better results in their GCSEs to linking with local business to ensure a good transition to the workplace for our students. We will also look to inspire our students to develop skills for the modern and future workplace. Our Applied Technologies and Mathematics initiatives are particularly good at this, the CBI have shown that employers need young people with these skills to be able to grow their businesses.

Amongst the services we provide are, training and resources for junior school teachers to develop STEM (Science Technologies Engineering and Maths) activities. This allows us to link them with mentors (mostly PHD students and lecturers) from Manchester University who visit schools to develop students learning and to allow them to visit workplaces where they can see first hand where the application of these subjects solve real life problems. This also happens with students at the academy for example with students in year 9 who visit a local recycling plant to have very similar experiences.