St James is a thriving, diverse and ambitious community with 980 pupils. We are an 11-16 mixed comprehensive school that is consistently one of the highest performing in the area. We perform so well because from the moment they join us, we ask our pupils to work hard and be kind. These two behaviours epitomise what we think is important for both pupils and staff alike. Our school is situated in the East of Exeter on a new, purpose-built site which means we benefit from excellent facilities, including an art and photography suite with gallery, an amphitheatre, a drama studio and a theatre with full rigged lighting and raked seating, a 4G full sized pitch, a greenhouse, allotments and significant school fields. At St James, we value teachers’ time which is why we have a sensible marking policy for classwork meaning that you are not routinely expected to handwrite feedback to pupils. Additionally, we have an automated system for homework which is planned, set and checked for you. All this saves you time so that you can focus on getting to know your pupils and planning the very best lessons for them. Across EBACC subjects, we have a common curriculum with fully resourced schemes that you simply need to refine for your classes’ needs. Our classrooms are disruption free as our behaviour system removes pupils who do not follow our lesson expectations. All sanctions are centralised so that you can simply get on with your job: teaching. We ensure that our students are outward facing and enjoy a full range of experiences and opportunities whilst they are at St James. We help develop open minded, receptive and kind people, who embrace new ideas and change and who enjoy life and want to explore it by experiencing new things. The arts are core to our curriculum and are the beating heart of our school. All students partake in the arts and are given the opportunity to take the full range of arts qualifications at KS4. More than 70% of our pupils complete the English Baccalaureate, and, as a result, we see our students invited to join elite post-16 programs, such as the Exeter Maths School and the Reach Academy. The core of our ambitious learning culture is a broad, knowledge-rich curriculum, which is cohesive, cumulative and effectively sequenced. Our common curriculum is academic, rigorous and challenging, and designed with long-term memory in mind; students’ knowledge, skills and understanding are cemented by frequent and systematic revisiting.