Don Valley Academy is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school

Comprehensive school

A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...

 located in Scawthorpe, Doncaster

Doncaster

Doncaster is a town in South Yorkshire, England, and the principal settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. The town is about from Sheffield and is popularly referred to as "Donny"...

, South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

. The school also has a significant Sixth Form

Sixth form

In the education systems of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and of Commonwealth West Indian countries such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica and Malta, the sixth form is the final two years of secondary education, where students, usually sixteen to eighteen years of age,...

 centre.

History

The original school was built in the mid 1950s, with the first intake of pupils in September 1957. What was effectively another school was built in the mid 1960s as part of the move by the West Riding County Council to comprehensive education. It had more facilities than the existing one, including a swimming pool and much enhanced stage facilities in the main hall. The new school took up approximately half of the former playing fields . The second school ran for a year or so as a separate entity before the two merged to become Don Valley Comprehensive School. This naming was only brief and the school was soon renamed back to Don Valley High School, reportedly at the insistence of the then headmaster, Mr Horncastle. The newer school served students in their first three years of senior school, aged 11 to 14; the older school served them in the remainder of their time, aged 14 to 18, and included the lower and upper sixth forms.

In 2006, Don Valley became a Performing Arts College. Every student has a choice of dramatic arts or media to study.

In 2011, Don Valley became an academy progressing from a performing arts school.

Notable alumni

• Sarah Stevenson
  Sarah Stevenson
  Sarah Diana Stevenson is a British Taekwondo athlete from Bentley near Doncaster, England.Stevenson finished fourth on her Olympics debut in 2000 and after a judging error was reversed in the quarter-finals of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, she went on to win a Bronze medal, the first British...
  
  , British Taekwondo Olympic bronze medallist
• Graham Hyde
  Graham Hyde
  Graham Hyde is a professional footballer, currently Head Coach at Redditch United.-Playing career:...
  
  , footballer