Our Centres

Highfields College offers a network of teaching centres designed to help children who have struggled to cope or attend well at their regular school. Our main goal is to get your child back into a positive education experience. Each focus on education everyday, making sure your child feels connected to school staff, a sense of purpose in their subjects, and develops the self-awareness and skills to think for themselves.

Main Campus

Our Main Campus is in Brinnington and is where the majority of our students attend. It is a large purpose-built PRU and AP school site with a wide range of facilities and green space. It is smaller than a secondary school and similar in size to a medium to large sized Primary school. It is divided into two distinct buildings organised largely by key stages.

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Compass (formerly known as KS4 Main Building) is our main offer for students in Years 10 and 11. We also offer this to Year 9s ready for this environment and curriculum. Here, the focus is on achieving qualifications and getting ready for work or college after Year 11. Over half of their time is spent on essential core subjects like English, Maths, and Science to ensure students leave us with what is universally expected by both colleges and workplaces. However, within each school day, students also get to choose from a variety of creative, technical, and job-focused courses (GCSEs and vocational qualifications) that suit their specific talents and interests. There is also a strong focus on PSHE to ensure students develop the social and emotional skills required for entering adulthood.

• A visual summary of the subjects we offer within the KS4 Main Building can be viewed here.
• The qualifications offered at Year 10 and 11 are outlined here.

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Nexus (formerly known as KS3 Extension) is our main offer for KS3 (Years 7, 8, and 9). On occasion we may also place Year 10s here as part of a bespoke package of support. Here, the focus is to nurture them as more independent learners. We coach them over time in the skills needed to be more self-aware, self-controlled and resilient. We offer essential core subjects like English, Maths and Science to build a strong foundation and extend studies further into PE, Art, PSHE and Computing. We deliver our curriculum in this centre based on the Nurture Groups model which, at its most basic, means each class has one teacher for their entire day. A large number of students progress from the Nexus Building to the Compass Building and students who do this tend to be very successful. However, we also focus at this stage on readying students who wish to return to mainstream school with better self-awareness and strategies with which to cope in this larger setting.

• A visual summary of the subjects we offer within the KS3 Extension can be viewed here.

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The college operates two ARC classrooms which are specifically focused on those students who are aiming to return to a larger, usually mainstream, school setting. The ARC classrooms often have dual-registered students attending them – that is, students who have been referred in for Partnership, Step Out or Restart placement. The classrooms have have 1 – 2 designated teachers who deliver core subjects in English, Maths and Science with the students then going into classrooms within the wider college for other subjects and projects. The curriculum within these classrooms is heavily focused on developing the self-awareness, social awareness and ‘navigating mainstream’ skills.

• A visual summary of the subjects we offer within ARC can be viewed here: KS4 ARC | KS3 ARC

Satellite Centres (The ‘AP Group’)

We run a group of smaller, specialist teaching environments away from the main site near Stockport town centred. As a collective these are called the ‘AP Group’ (Alternative Provision Group). These are specifically designed for students who currently find it too difficult to attend the main campus. This ensures your child receives high-quality teaching from our own staff, no matter how complex their needs.

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The Bridge is a centre for our younger students in Key Stage 3. It is set up to be a ‘bridge’ back to school life for children who can be very anxious and withdrawn for long periods as well as having, at times, displayed challenging behaviour. This is a smaller, more secure environment that specializes in supporting students with combined SEND concerns and SEMH needs. This includes those students on the Autism spectrum – or in the process of being identified as being on the Autism spectrum. The curriculum not only covers academics like Maths and English, but also focuses heavily on life skills such as emotional literacy, social skills and navigating a wider world.

• A visual summary of the subjects we offer within TBEC can be viewed here.

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The Personalised Learning Centre (PLC) is for a very small number of mostly KS4 students who have struggled to attend school due to severe anxiety or documented concerns over complex mental health needs (often including Attachment Disorder and/or Trauma) alongside a history of presenting with challenging behaviour. This is a highly-resourced, tailored provision, offering core subject teaching (English, Maths and Science) with ‘placement-based learning’ involve our own art studio, music studio, gym programme and health & social care classroom. The PLC is located in the town centre, and students are usually taught one-to-one, pairs or in very small groups. Our Outreach service is part of this and involves staff meeting students in safe community locations like libraries to help them slowly build back their trust in education.

• A visual summary of the subjects we offer within the PLC can be viewed here.
• The qualifications offered at Year 10 and 11 are outlined here.

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Stockport Young Futures is our admissions and induction provision for students arriving new to the college. It acts as a transitional space, providing a mix of assessment, high-quality teaching and intensive mentoring to identify and address the issues that led to severe difficulties in their previous setting, be that permanent exclusion and/or entrenched non-attendance. The aim is to help them feel more secure and get them ready for their next step, whether that’s integrating into the main Highfields College site or returning to a mainstream school.