In September 2018, the first Year 7's were admitted to the school. Year 10 admissions will remain open until 2021, from when admissions will only be accepted at 11 and sixth form. Applications for admission are made though the home education authority. The academy has an admissions number of 120.
Curriculum
Students study a broad curriculum in a building equipped to allow specialist study in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics curriculum areas. The school operates an extended day finishing at 3:45. At Key Stage 4, students have the opportunity to study the group of subjects designated by the government as EBacc, the English Baccalaureate. These are the core academic subjects: English, Mathematics, History or Geography, two sciences and a language. All students study Mathematics, English Language, English Literature, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Either ICT or Engineering is compulsory. Students make up the rest of their timetable by choosing two subjects from iMedia, Computer Science, Design and Technology, Business Studies, Media studies, History, Geography and Spanish. In 2018, the college decided to not run an iMedia option for newly admitted Year 10's, instead deciding to run a Photography option instead. In addition, they added basic PE lessons to meet the Department of Education's requirements.
Buildings
The academy is built on the former site of a fire station, on the A52 Clifton Boulevard in Dunkirk, Nottingham. It was designed by Bond Bryan Architects for BAM Construction. It has a gross internal floor area of 8,600 square metres and cost £10 million. It was completed in 2014. In addition to the standard features that one finds on a secondary school, there are specialist rooms provided for the STEM subjects. For mechanical engineering there are workshops with CNC lathes, milling machines and routers. There are bench facilities for heat treatment, welding and brazing. For electronic engineering there is printed circuit board production and assembly equipment. The building also houses industry standard test equipment. Software is available for virtual circuit simulation and testing. Process control engineering equipment allows training in hydraulic and pneumatic control systems. The ten dedicated science laboratories are to an industrial research standard. Across the site there are 150 desktop PCs running Autodesk and Adobe software. Robotics is taught using Raspberry Pis and Lego Mindstorms. Programming is done in Python.
