Park View’s 16-19 provision has changed since 2017 when we launched our Park View Academy of Sport. This venture had an aim of combining Sixth Form academic studies with a professional sporting environment and the dedicated sporting development our of Sixth Form students. The Academy of Sport has so far proved to be successful in both academic and sporting terms with many local, regional, national and international athletes attending the school and developing their sporting and academic aspirations. Since the launch, we have worked with partners including Durham Cricket Club, Durham County Council, Crossfit CLS, Huddersfield Town Football Club and many more to develop our sporting provision. We have been delighted with our progress on the sports arena and enjoy being English School Women’s Football Champions and English Colleges Men’s Football Champions amongst many other individual and team accolades. In addition we are proud to have supported student applications to various destinations at 18 years old including enrolment in various prestigious UK, European and US universities including Harvard Oxford and Cambridge as well as an increasing number of successful enrolment in high quality degree apprenticeships.
We are in the fortunate position of being a popular destination, albeit a relatively small Post-16 provider. Sadly, in 2022, the number of classrooms we have access to prevented some students from enrolling into the Academy of Sport as we could not accommodate the extra numbers. Since then, we have been working hard to develop more space for Post 16 academic studies so that we are not in a position of turning prospective students away in the future.
The relocation and refurbishment of the Park View Performance Gym from underneath the classrooms in the Sixth Form Centre into the old school gymnasium has been a huge success with students throughout the school benefitting from the excellent, state-of-the-art facilities. The relocation of the gym has created a vast empty space perfectly suited to being refitted into more useful space, namely more communal space, storage, a meeting and staff room as well as, most crucially, eight new classrooms that can be used by Park View students.