View our posts

28/03/24

Well done everyone 💪

27/03/24

A huge congratulations to all of our students that took part in the bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition. In spite of the inclement weather, their perseverance throughout the expedition was truly inspiring.  pic.twitter.com/ffHkwcgNLj

27/03/24

Mr Manners kicks off this term’s Rewards and Celebrations Evening, along with our four Head Students! pic.twitter.com/wQHPnvfjkH

27/03/24

Our Year 8s have been completing a project called My Croydon, exploring the history and amazing architecture in Croydon. They also looked at the work of local signwriter, Lionel Stanhope. See pictures below, completed for Homework. Well done Year 8! pic.twitter.com/3NI2I9UrcD

25/03/24

Year 7 have been making their own imagined Dragon eye out of air drying clay. They have used their colour blending skills to add paint to show the scales pic.twitter.com/s7Sp4KHLpk

22/03/24

We are thrilled to have Mr Nunes, Captain of the London U18 Volleyball Team, with working with us moving forward, as our Associate Sports Coach across all key stages. Fantastic opportunity for our students! pic.twitter.com/ACWfaaONNx

22/03/24

We are thrilled to have Levi, Captain of the London Volleyball Team, with working with us moving forward and our Year 10 and 11 students. Fantastic opportunity for our students! pic.twitter.com/FqAMe7g0nA

22/03/24

Each week we have reading buddies from come to read with our Year 2s. This is part of our primary/secondary links and the children love meeting the older Harris children! pic.twitter.com/MQDDOPoEbw

18/03/24

The Great Big Footy & Booky Quiz. Our students did really well on the quiz, with 5 students who got 9 out of 10 questions right! We also held a 'Book Tasting', with different extracts from various books. Students really enjoyed this and championed their favourite book choices. pic.twitter.com/cFhxsHrjsG

15/03/24

This week we also celebrated 🧪Activities spanned across lessons, lunchtimes, and after school! We had demos, fun experiments, and a quiz for all students to take part in!Thank you to Ms Salmon and the whole science team for such a fun filled week! pic.twitter.com/2byOxERD3G

15/03/24

Fantastic recital this afternoon! With our first place winner reciting a whopping 263 digits of Pi!!!Fantastic effort by all of our participants and Happy Pi Day once again! Thank you to Ms Lee and her Maths team for organising pic.twitter.com/KVT1RsctXM

14/03/24

Happy Pi Day! It’s been fantastic wishing all of our students happy Pi day today! Here’s some of teachers in their Pi tees! Tomorrow, is our annual Pi Recital comp and we can’t wait! Last year’s winner, a former Y11 recited 177 digits of Pi!!! pic.twitter.com/53pK63TXoN

14/03/24

Historian Isaac Crichlow visited our Year 8s and Year 10s today to discuss his research on African and Caribbean cultures during and after transatlantic enslavement. They asked some great questions. Thanks Isaac for your time and energy.Truly inspirational! pic.twitter.com/62yHFTTAK9

13/03/24

🎶 We’re so lucky to have not one but TWO MiSST Together days happening today in different parts of the UK. 🙌 Students from a total of 6 of our partner schools are making music together in Oldham and Peckham! We can’t wait to hear them play! 🎺🎻#MusicEducation… pic.twitter.com/s4ULZIZO0x

13/03/24

Do you live in Croydon but attend a school outside of Croydon? You can request a voucher from the council through the voucher request form ~ https://t.co/LuKR0LwNY7 |

11/03/24

Last week our Student Voice baked and decorated an amazing rainbow cake to celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month. Delicious! pic.twitter.com/W0by5ZIX03

07/03/24

Happy World Book Day from us to you! We hope you had a fantastic day celebrating reading and we look forward to next year! pic.twitter.com/7IRI0nczrH

07/03/24

The start of World Book Day today! Students were greeted by staff dressed in an array of character costumes! Here some of the Senior Team this morning! pic.twitter.com/XdghTQFVxm

04/03/24

Today is the final day of the tailored talks on Stop & Search for all students. have been fantastic in sharing with students on the rules and their rights of Stop & Search. Our final session was for Year 7 this morning. Thank you to the Mentivity team pic.twitter.com/4gDj9S9LIW

02/03/24

Thanks all! A great game and a great way to end the week! https://t.co/vEOYWZVdXY

Harris Academies
All Academies in our Federation aim to transform the lives of the students they serve by bringing about rapid improvement in examination results, personal development and aspiration.

Central Office

Bexley

Bromley

Clapham

Croydon

Greenwich

Haringey

Havering

Merton

Newham

Southwark

Stratford

Sutton

Thurrock

Wandsworth

Westminster

Willesden

Latest News

Posted on January 14th 2019

New Sixth Form - Year 9 Students Interview Ms Bergin

Invictus Scroll Club (4)Chance and Paulina (pictured), Year 9, interviewed Principal Claudette Bergin about our new sixth form. Here's their article, which was originally published in our newsletter, Invictus Scroll.

A new chapter of history is about to be written in the story of Harris Invictus. In 2019, our Academy will open its doors to its very first 6th form students. Hundreds more students will be joining us, some homegrown from our own Academy and others from outside will come for the best qualifications in life, our new state of the art facilities and our passionate teachers.

The Invictus Scroll went to interview the Principal Ms Bergin to find out more about the 6th form and wider Academy news. Sitting in her office on London Road, she told us: “The next five years at Harris Invictus are going to be wonderful. My vision is to see 6th form on its feet here. I want students to be able to do the A-levels and BTECs they need to succeed in life. My biggest dream is for HIAC students to get their qualifications here and go on to university.”

"Best thing about Croydon"

Ms Bergin, who has been Principal for nearly two years at Harris Invictus, has to look after our current intake of 855 students and this will increase massively when the 6th form opens. She is clearly very proud of her job and the Academy in the community. “I said this to my husband the other night and I’m going to share it with you: Harris Invictus is the best thing about Croydon," she said. "I really mean that. I want the community to respect and love us. I want us to be the best Academy in Croydon.”

Ms Bergin also told us that there would be more exciting new changes coming to our Academy. For example, she wants to introduce new languages such as Mandarin and Portuguese to the school. Although these changes might take a while to come into place, Ms Bergin is clearly very passionate about them: “I would really love to offer Mandarin and maybe Portuguese. Mandarin is my favourite though - I would love to learn it and offer it here. I also really want to raise awareness about community languages. Many people here speak so many languages at home and we could really excel by offering qualifications in that here. I learnt the other day that somebody in the Academy knows Czech – I knew them for two years and I only just found out!”

Language exchanges

But there are even more opportunities coming for Harris students who are interested in languages. Ms Bergin told us that in the future she is looking into setting up an exchange programme for students. This means that students who speak other languages can go and live abroad for a week to learn in the country whose language they are studying – and we will probably start with France. In return, we would take students here who want to learn English. “It’s early days”, says Ms Bergin, “but this is a really good way to learn a language and get the qualifications that students need. Whatever happens with Brexit we all need to be prepared and able to build relationships with other countries.”

There are other new great chances and opportunities coming for HIAC students who are interested in other subjects too. Lots of students have expressed a passion and interest for studying food technology and our building has specially-built labs for that purpose. At the moment there is a popular after school club that quickly gets filled up by students who want to do baking, but soon they may be able to take Food Technology as a formal qualification too.

“I am thinking about developing the Food Technology opportunities here in 2019. We started small with an enrichment club to try and decipher if there was a real excitement about the subject and in the future we really want to extend that. I’m going to do my best to make that happen.”

Lockers

The last subject we asked Ms Bergin about was the controversial one: lockers. Lots of HIAC students want lockers to stop the daily struggle of walking up stairs with heavy GCSE texts. However, Ms Bergin was very clear and strong in her opposition to introducing lockers: “There are going to be no lockers. A lot of new builds don’t have them. They take up too much space and personally I think they can create behaviour issues. They create hot spots where you can’t quite see everything – dark spots where you can get poor behaviour.”

Our Academy clearly wouldn’t be the same without Ms Bergin. It’s clear she has got lots of plans for improving and changing the school (even if we are not getting lockers!). She told us personally that she used to have a career in advertising and she is really keen on art, so if she wasn’t our Principal she might pursue a career in illustration or fashion. But with her obvious passion for education, we are glad she is leading Harris Invictus. As she said, “I left industry to work with young people. I can’t imagine doing anything else really. You have these golden moments like when a child gives me a golden ticket and it just lights up their day. It reminds me why I do this.” 

Chance and Paulina, Year 9


Download the latest issue of Invictus Scrool.