At XP East, we believe that creativity is a powerful tool for learning, expression, and personal growth. Our Visual Arts Aptitude route offers a unique opportunity for Year 7 students with a natural flair for creativity to gain a place at a school where the arts are truly valued.
This pathway is open to all children, no prior art training or experience required, just a passion for drawing, designing, and thinking creatively.
Through an inspiring curriculum, expert support, and dynamic extra-curricular opportunities, students will develop their talents across a range of visual art disciplines. If your child loves to create, imagine, and explore the world through art, this is the perfect chance to help them shine. Click here to see highlights from our recent annual XP Festival of Arts and Culture
Apply now and let their creativity take centre stage! Find out more about this here: https://xptrust.info/XPEVA
To ensure a balanced intake of students across all ability levels, all applicants to an XP secondary school must sit a Fair Banding Assessment.
This multiple-choice test focuses on non-verbal reasoning and helps us place students into one of five ability bands. There is no pass or fail, and results are used solely to support a broad and representative admissions process.
Completing the assessment is a key part of the application and must be done to be considered for a place.
Please ensure your child is registered by 31st October 2025 and prepared to attend the assessment on 22nd November 2025.
Our Year 11 historians have been developing their understanding of life in Nazi Germany, exploring the experiences of different groups within German society.
Students revisited key policies affecting German workers, including the German Labour Front (DAF), Beauty Through Labour and the Reich Labour Service, before moving on to explore the changing lives of German women and the Nazi vision of a Volksgemeinschaft – a people’s community united around Nazi ideals.
Students were encouraged to use purple pen to check, correct and build on their answers, helping to address misconceptions and strengthen their historical knowledge. Through thoughtful questioning and discussion with Mrs Eliott, they made connections between individual experiences and the Nazis’ wider aims for German society.
It has been fantastic to see our Year 11 historians engaging so thoughtfully with this challenging topic and continually working to improve their historical understanding. Well done, Year 11!
There is no slowing down for our Year 11s this term! We are incredibly proud of the resilience and work ethic this cohort is displaying, both in the sports hall and out on the pitch.
In Ultimate Frisbee, the energy has been phenomenal. Students are pushing their cardiovascular limits with spectacular catches and pinpoint passes, all while demonstrating brilliant sportsmanship and the self-refereed “Spirit of the Game.”
In BTEC Sport, students have been diving into the components of fitness by trying exciting new ways of learning. Working collaboratively together to grapple new key words and linking them to sporting examples.
E30 are jumping head first into all things GCSE and Dickens. This year as we are completing our initial read of A Christmas Carol we are challenging the students to record their own revision notes on their own copy of the text. So far they have more than risen to this challenge.
They are adding their own analysis to the parts that they feel they need support to explain or key quotations. It is impressive to see how diligent they are all being with this.
Announcing Our New Publication: ‘Celebrating Ten Years of Expeditions at XP’
A new publication, ‘Celebrating Ten Years of Learning Expeditions at XP’, written by our co-founder, Andy Sprakes, is now available. The book highlights an extensive and broad selection of the beautiful work created by our young people and staff from across our Trust. It is a profound and often moving reminder of the purpose, agency, and consequence of our work; illuminating the transformative power and far-reaching impact of Learning Expeditions.
In the next few weeks, the book will be made available to the general public and will retail at £20. However, to mark the publication of this much-anticipated book, it is being made available exclusively to staff across our Trust for a not-for-profit cost price of £5. In the spirit of Crew the proceeds will be donated to charity.
When staff fill in the google form and order the book at this price, they will be able to choose to donate to one of two local charities and one national charity that have supported and worked alongside us in the past.
We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude and congratulations to the exceptional staff across our Trust whose unwavering dedication, creativity, and passion made this publication, and the transformative work within it, possible.
We wrapped up the 2026 academic year with another hugely successful Sports Day!Check out our NEW video celebrating all the action and highlighting the winners across Crew vs. Crew, Phase vs. Phase, and School vs. School.
A massive well done to XP East for taking home the victory once again! Outstanding effort from everyone involved—let’s bring that same energy next year, XP! 🏆
The last few weeks have completely flown by, and that is largely down to just how much awesome work Year 8 have been producing. They have been absolutely blowing my mind with the start they have made to their new expedition, Being Human.
We began with immersion, with students being challenged to think hard, spot patterns and make connections without yet knowing exactly where the expedition was heading..
One of the biggest moments was our fieldwork to Danes Dyke, where students took part in fossil hunting. On the surface, it looked like the expedition might be heading in the direction of dinosaurs, but that was all part of the mystery. The fossils encouraged students to think scientifically about evidence from the past, while also using mathematical thinking to compare, measure and look for patterns in what they found. It was a brilliant red herring and got students questioning how all of these different experiences might eventually connect. A huge appreciation to Mr Heslop for his fantastic organisation of this fieldwork.
Then came the big reveal..
Students took part in an amazing (and patience testing) puzzle and scratch-card adventure, working together to uncover clues and piece together how their individual words linked to a much bigger picture. Across Year 8, students were able to make connections, test ideas and begin to see where the expedition was heading.
And finally, our Guiding Question was revealed:
What does it mean to be human?
Since then, X33 Skipper and E33 Pioneer have been producing some absolutely brilliant work.
Students have been taking real pride in their books and producing beautiful work with strong Craftsmanship and Quality. The level of thinking in lessons has been just as beautiful. Class discussions have been thoughtful, respectful and full of really interesting ideas as students begin to grapple with identity, belief, religion, experience and what all of these things can tell us about being human.
A special shout-out has to go to Roza, who shared some of her own experiences and understanding of religion and belief with the class. Her contribution gave us even more knowledge and perspective to grapple with and really enriched the discussion.
You may also have seen on other blogs that our brilliant Year 8 staff team, alongside the amazing Mrs Mawby, have been getting out into the Doncaster community and visiting residents in local residential care homes.
Students have been getting to know individual residents, listening to their stories and beginning to piece together their life experiences. This gives them another powerful way into our Guiding Question: what can someone’s memories, relationships, experiences, challenges and achievements teach us about what it means to be human?
Students will use what they learn from these conversations to create a beautiful gift for the residents they have worked with, which will be delivered closer to Christmas.
There is already so much to celebrate, and we are only at the beginning!!
Year 8, you are absolutely smashing it. Watch this space..
Mathematics is often hidden in plain sight, and recently, our Year 8 students proved that it is even reflected right back at us in the mirror. Bringing history, art, and geometry together, our latest unit on ratio and proportion saw students stepping into the shoes of Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci to investigate the famous Vitruvian Man.
To kick off the investigation, classrooms transformed into active research laboratories. Armed with their rulers, students paired up to gather empirical body measurements—carefully recording key features, including head dimensions and total body height. The mission was clear: discover whether human anatomy follows predictable mathematical patterns.
The classroom buzz was immediate as students uncovered fascinating proportional relationships. Many were thrilled to confirm da Vinci’s observation that an individual’s total height is roughly equivalent to eight head lengths—a classic 1:8 ratio. Abstract mathematical concepts like scaling factors, simplifying ratios, and proportional reasoning suddenly became personal, visual, and remarkably intuitive.
Translating those real-world measurements onto paper is where the true precision comes in. Students are currently hard at work drafting self-portraits drawn strictly to scale. Applying scale factors to turn raw millimeter and centimeter measurements into proportional artwork demands careful calculation, sharp focus, and a solid understanding of how ratios operate in practice.
Once the drafting phase is complete, these impressive pieces will be proudly displayed on our expedition working wall to showcase the progression of their learning journey. By bridging the gap between abstract algebra and creative application, our Year 8 mathematicians are developing a whole new perspective on how ratio shapes the world around us. Fantastic effort so far, Year 8!
