In 2018 Woodrush became part of the Mandarin Excellence Programme one of only 67 selected schools in the country. This is an exciting opportunity for students to receive four hours of teacher taught classroom lessons each week, with a native mandarin speaker.

Disability Confident is creating a movement of change, encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
Being Disability Confident is a unique opportunity to lead the way in your community, and you might just discover someone your business cannot do without.
Disability Confident employers, like Woodrush, are:
• challenging attitudes towards disability
• increasing understanding of disability
• removing barriers to disabled people and those with long-term health conditions
• ensuring that disabled people have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations

Disability Confident employer scheme - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Stonewall & learning at Woodrush
As a Stonewall Champion School, we stand for all lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning, and ace (LGBTQ+) people. We agree with Stonewall's vision of a world where LGBTQ+ people everywhere are free to be themselves and can live their lives to the full. And we believe this entitlement is central to our ethos at Woodrush - as a place for all individuals to be inspired to enjoy, achieve and thrive. 

Stonewall & working at Woodrush
As a Stonewall Champion School, we also commit as an employer and workplace to be a truly inclusive place without exception. Inclusion is not a given; it is a conscious effort organisations, including ourselves, must make to ensure all staff can bring their whole selves to work. 

www.stonewall.org.uk

Connecting Classrooms
We are extremely proud of our British Council Connecting Classrooms projects and collaborative efforts and the closeness that has been forged between Woodrush, our three UK partner school and our four partner schools in Sierra Leone. This partnership, of over 5000 students, has provided many unique curriculum experiences for Woodrush students and each project has unleashed real creativity and cultural understanding in our classrooms.

See a list of our collaborative partners here.

The National Governance Association NGA is the membership organisation for governors, trustees and clerks of state schools in England.

SSAT
Woodrush is proud to be a member of SSAT Leading Edge network which connects high-performing SSAT member schools across the country.

Our membership supports our capacity to engage, network and professional develop alongside schools and MATs outside or our school walls.

Since 2019, we have been accredited by SSAT's Framework for Exceptional Education in the following strands:

SSAT Professional Learning
This recognises our comprehensive and personalised CPDL offer for our staff.

SSAT Quality Assurance QA
Quality Assurance is a whole school responsibility that now permeates all that we do across our curriculum, practice and inclusion provision. We continue to adopt dynamic reviews of how to best capture impact and raise participation with stakeholders. This is helping to promote and inform our relentless commitment to whole school improvement to inspire, achieve and celebrate success.

In addition to this networking and accreditation, we have staff engaged on the SSAT Leadership programmes and have been commissioned an Innovation Grant in 2022 to develop whole school approaches to Diversity, Equality & Inclusivity.

Woodrush is proud to be a National School Breakfast Programme (NSBP) school. The NSBP is part-funded by the Department for Education and delivered by Family Action to support schools in England to provide children with a healthy breakfast at the start of the school day.

This means that every day of the year, students can arrive at school before Tutor Time and collect a toasted breakfast bagel with a choice of spread or hot porridge with added honey and/or cinnamon. Woodrush and Family Action are committed to supporting child development, and we both know that a healthy school breakfast, without barriers or stigma, can set up children to succeed and give them the very best chance to learn.

Woodrush High School is the only school in the country that sponsors a public train station. We are delighted to maintain the environment at our local Wythall Train Station, as part of a community partnership with West Midlands Trains and the Friends of the Shakespeare Line. 

Our current EEF Affliated projects are: 

1. the Embedding Formative Assessment project promoting high-impact methods of feedback.

2. BITUP raising attendance programme which aims to improve communications between schools and parents/carers regarding school attendance if it falls below 95%.