Senior Leadership Team

Our Senior Leadership Team knows what excellence looks like and, because many of us have worked in Good and Outstanding schools, we also know how to achieve it. We have a strong shared vision of the school we want our students to experience. Moreover our principles of kindness, honesty, hope, positivity, and teamwork underpin the way we work with staff, students and parents alike. We have high expectations of all our staff and ourselves. We work hard, we are very ambitious for our students and we are constantly striving to provide the best practice we can achieve. Our staff retention is excellent; our staff are proud to work at Ridgewood and enjoy being here.

The Headteacher, Mrs Cope has over twenty years’ experience of working in transformational senior leadership and held Head of House and Head of English posts earlier in her career. In addition, Mrs Cope has led Learning and Teaching and Curriculum across a number of her previous secondary schools. She works with a dynamic and highly effective team of senior and middle leaders. Stour Vale Academy Trust ensures that leadership across the trust shares good practice and expertise. In November 2019, Ofsted graded Ridgewood’s Leadership as ‘Good’ and described our school as changing “beyond recognition”.