A brand new high school to be run by Dixons Academies Trust and serving the local community in and around Newall Green and Wythenshawe is set to open next September 2023 just three years after the Government closed an existing school on the same site
The new co-educational free school – to be known as Dixons Newall Green – will open to pupils in Year 7 from next September, and parents of children due to start high school next autumn can now apply for a place at the school.
The school will open initially just for 140 Year 7 pupils and will grow year by year until it has students aged 11 to 16 by 2027.
The new school will be a small local school serving the communities of Wythenshawe and will open on the site of the former Newall Green High School which closed its doors to pupils last year following a decision to do so by the Trust that ran the school at that time with the agreement of the Department for Education (DFE).
The existing school site will now undergo extensive building works to ensure the provision of a state-of-the-art space for learning for its pupils.
Councillor Garry Bridges, Executive Member for Children and Schools, Manchester City Council, said: “This is great news for Wythenshawe and we’re really pleased to be working closely with Dixons to ensure the early opening of this new high school for the area from next year.
“We knew all along that more high school places would be needed in the area and we’re really happy to see a high school again on this site serving the local community.”
As a school trust of 15 schools, growing to 17 by next year, Dixons focuses specifically on turnaround academies and new free schools, working in the parts of the north where young lives are adversely affected by social and educational disadvantage. The trust’s mission is to challenge this disadvantage and give every child, regardless of background, the opportunity to fulfil their academic potential. Dixons Academies Trust currently leads five outstanding free schools.
The trust has over 30 years’ experience and operates in Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. It is the second placed school trust in the country, significantly out-performing national averages against all six measures. This will be the second Dixons school in the Wythenshawe area, alongside Dixons Brooklands Academy.
Dixons has a strong reputation for building exceptional schools. All of Dixons’ free schools have been graded outstanding, with one – Dixons Trinity Academy – ranking 7th, 3rd and 11th in the country for Progress 8 (Progress 8 compares students’ results to those of other students nationally with similar prior attainment). Its free schools achieved an average Progress 8 score of +1.00 and two placed in the top 40 highest performing schools nationally.
Mark Harrison, Executive Principal, Dixons Academies Trust, said: “We are really proud to be opening another school in Manchester and serving the community of Wythenshawe. We know that choosing a secondary school for our children is one of the biggest decisions we will make; that’s why we are committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure the success of Dixons Newall Green, leveraging our knowledge and experiences from the success of all of Dixons’ secondary free schools to give our students access to an outstanding education.”
