At Featherstone High School the Performing Arts faculty forms a valuable part of the students’ school experience. Our ethos is to give students a variety of in-class and extracurricular activities and opportunities through all the arts.  We are passionate about working together as a team and strive to give pupils high quality experiences in lessons as well as many performance and back stage experiences outside of lessons.

The Dance department aims to develop students' creativity, confidence and dance ability through the three elements of dance; performance, choreography and appreciation.  We aim to use a variety of styles of dance, engaging stimulus and professional dance works that will give students a range of experiences and a good grounding in dance if they were to continue to study GCSE dance.

Dance is taught as a separate subject in year 7 and as a strand within PE for year 8.  Dance is taught within the PE block and we share the PE values as well.  The PE Department have a desire to achieve physical, mental and social well‐being through the medium of physical activity. We see PE as being an integral part of having lifelong health through participation in Physical Education.

In year 7 students study three units of dance, a theme on Graffiti, a theme on James Bond and the Style of dance unit based on African.  These units aim to build up their skills, confidence and enjoyment in dance.  In year 8 we introduce the stimulus of professional dance works (Mathew Bourne’s Nutcracker and Swanson by Christopher Bruce).  In all lessons students evaluate their own and others work to ensure they continue to make progress.

We develop students’ cultural capital through enrichment, such as extra curricular clubs, theatre visits and performances in school shows such as the KS3 Showcase, the Dance Festival and the whole school musical. We promote positive British values and attitudes that ensure students physical and emotional well-being.  These shows and experiences provide a range of opportunities for both performance, choreography, design or other backstage roles. This in turn provides a wider understanding of the career opportunities within the Arts, and exposes students to learning a variety of skills including team work, organisation, working under pressure and presenting work to a live audience.

Our key values are to create confident and resilient individuals who are able to meet the challenges of an increasingly changing social environment. We aspire for students to enjoy our lessons in a safe and stimulating environment.  In the future we hope students continuously leading safe, healthy and fulfilling lives; and making successful transition to employment, training, further and higher education.

Year 7
Year 8
Year 9

Year 7
Year 8
Year 9