A welcome from Jo Young, Principal

Our vision is to develop students with character, courage and conscience, who become academically and personally successful and lead in their community and beyond.

Welcome to Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich. It is an honour to welcome you to our richly diverse and warm, welcoming community. We provide an exceptional education, providing inspiration, challenge and vibrancy alongside a strong culture of care and support for all our students.

We benefit from a beautiful site, with extensive green space overlooking Peckham Rye. Our site benefits from excellent facilities which enrich our academic curriculum and wellbeing of our students and staff alike.

At Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich, we believe every student can achieve academic success and we place learning at the heart of everything we do. Our curriculum is broad, challenging, and rich. Our expert teachers are passionate, invoke curiosity and inspire students. This expertise develops students who are curious, interested learners and all students are encouraged to take risks in their learning. We foster a culture where students feel safe to make mistakes.

Our outstanding examination results place us amongst the top schools in the country. We are committed to academic rigour as this gives all students choice in the future. Our students also develop exceptional character, courage and conscience. They have a strong sense of justice, responsibility, community and kindness that they take into the world beyond the academy.

As part of the Harris Federation, we have strong values which help to define our culture and how we do things. Our commitment to academic excellence, our determination to live by our values and to uphold the highest standards of behaviour mean that this is a caring, supportive yet rigorous environment where all can thrive.

Our approach

Our approach to our curriculum means that pupils explore a broad range of subjects and specialisms, developing expert skills in each subject area and understanding the unique perspective on the world that each subject can bring.

We ensure that our curriculum is enlivened by real life examples, trips, visits and extra-curricular activities. We expect everyone to seek out and enjoy this rich range of wider opportunities.

We offer a wide range of opportunities for our students to develop personally as well as academically, ranging from chances to participate in the Debate Mate and Jack Petchey Speak Up Speak Out competitions, to the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and almost everything in between!

Our students can be seen exhibiting their art at the Peckham Festival, and their musical talents at By Peckham, For Peckham Music Festivals. Students offer support to one another as subject specialist ambassadors, mental health ambassadors and by campaigning against human rights abuses in our annual Write for Rights campaign. We celebrate our rich diversity, raising money for local and national charities through our Culture Day celebrations. We are consistent winners of the Harris Federation sports day, Federation Debate Mate and Spell-a-thon. We also proudly showcase our student talent through sharing our poetry and art on Instagram. 

Caring, resilient and thoughtful

We strive to ensure every student is a successful adult, caring, resilient and thoughtful whose ambitions are high, who believe in the importance of life-long learning and giving back to their communities.

For adolescent girls, we recognise that we are in a privileged position to inspire the next generation of leaders. We develop confidence to challenge misogyny and sexism and empower our students to really believe that they can achieve their ambitions. We make sure that each of our pupils leaves the academy with genuine choices available to them; to undertake degree level study, travel, begin an apprenticeship or seek full time employment. Almost all of our pupils go to university - …..% last year to Russell Group universities.

Academic success and commitment to developing happy, confident, ambitious young people who lead full and enriching lives is at the heart of everything we do at Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich. We very much welcome your partnership in making our academy and our students the pride of our local community.

Jo Young, Principal