Our wide range of after school clubs and activities are designed to support students in their learning, to give students the opportunity to explore new hobbies and interests and to encourage students in the development and mastery of new skills and talents in sports, culture and the arts. 

Staff and students have full access to all of our wonderful facilities and we are always seeking out new exciting opportunities to make the best use of the opportunities provided by our building, facilities and open spaces. 

All subjects and departments offer a full range of curriculum based after school clubs designed to help with everything from homework to exam revision and preparation. These clubs give students access to additional teacher support and guidance from our learning mentors. 

The development of hobbies and interests has seen numerous clubs springing up including, Arts and Crafts, Media, Curry Club, Mountaineering, Project Catwalk, Life Drawing, Film Club, Manga Club, Product Design Club, Creative Writing, Journalists, Green Power Car Challenge, Cycle Maintenance, Cook4life, Cake Club, Dance and Performance to name but a few…! 

Our strength in sport in performance is only made possible by a fantastic amount of hard work and endeavour by both staff and students outside of the normal school day. We have a full range of sports teams across both team and individual disciplines. We currently have county champions in both boys and girls football and cross-country and city champions in cricket. 

Our tradition and reputation for performance continues to grow. Making full use of our professional 370 seat theatre, recent shows include Chicago, Zoom!, Send In The Clowns, Heroes and Villains as well as BTEC, GCSE and A Level showcase performances.

Expeditions and visits to give our students the opportunity to explore the world around them, work with others in new and exciting ways as well as providing a wealth of information and experience to help with their studies. Here are just some of the exciting expeditions and visits that our students have enjoyed in the past 12 months...

Regional Museum visits such as Life Centre, Newcastle; NMM, Bradford; Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh; The Beacon Maritime Museum; Life form drawing at Cumbria University.

Residential Field Studies at Blencathra Centre; Braithwaite House Outdoor Education Centre; Kepple Wray Outdoor Centre; Duke House Wood, Hexham.

Theatre Visits to see Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet and Legally Blonde. Residential to London with Performing Art, Art, History.

Tournaments such as Rotary Technology Challenge; Science and Engineering Challenge; Maths Challenge and Sport for All Wheelchair Event.

Extra Curricular activities such as Kidz Up North; U-Dance; Dumfries Ice Rink and Harry Potter at Muncaster Castle.

In addition our students have benefitted from informative visits to local employers including, Magistrate's Court, Carlisle; Veterinary Laboratories Agency; Dodd and Co; Pirelli; Crown Packaging and Northern Print, Gateshead.

We all want a decent job and to be successful at work. We want to help our students find their place in the world and flourish there. So more than ever before we need to work with employers to enable our students to offer them what their businesses need. 

This is why we have worked so closely with employers over the last few years and as a result we are the only Institution offering the Career Academy Programme in the whole of Cumbria. Our sixth form courses concentrate on the industries that are growing in our area and which need young, talented and ambitious employees.

We ask those employers what they look for when recruiting people and they tell us how many jobs they have for 18-year-olds, how many apprentices they are going to take on, how many graduates they want and in which subjects. Even more importantly these employers get involved in the education of our students. They act as mentors, offer visits to their workplaces, set projects and case studies and offer internships between years 12 and 13 to give students a real experience of employment and a real reference from one of the leaders of Carlisle’s business community such as Pirelli, CN Media Group, HSBC, Dodd & Co., Cumbria NHS Trust, David Allen and Co. In partnership with the Cumbria Chamber of Commerce our students engage in the Young Enterprise Companies Competition and the Young Chamber movement giving them the opportunity to demonstrate just how enterprising our young people can be.


As our students progress through their education at the academy they are given many opportunities to experience the opportunities provided by higher education. As an Academic Sponsor of the Richard Rose Academies the University of Cumbria offers a range of link activities including joint projects, guest lectures, sixth form conferences, campus visits and their ‘Widening Participation’ programme aimed at encouraging younger students to start thinking about opportunities beyond school. In addition to our work with UoC we have enhanced progression agreements with Newcastle, Northumbria and Edgehill Universities. Under these ‘compact’ arrangements our students can earn additional UCAS points through attendance at events, open days and study seminars.

Since the academy opened an increasing number of our students have gone on to university and we now have ex-students studying in Oxford,  Liverpool, Manchester, St Andrews,  Lancaster, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Durham, York, Birmingham, Leeds.