Valley Park School is a Foundation school

Foundation school

In England and Wales, a foundation school is a state-funded school in which the governing body has greater freedom in the running of the school than in community schools....

 in Maidstone

Maidstone

Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town linking Maidstone to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river was a source and route for much of the town's trade. Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The school caters for girls and boys between the ages of 11 and 18.

Valley Park became a specialist

Specialist school

The specialist schools programme was a UK government initiative which encouraged secondary schools in England to specialise in certain areas of the curriculum to boost achievement. The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust was responsible for the delivery of the programme...

 Arts College

Arts College

Arts Colleges were introduced in 1997 as part of the now defunct Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdom. The system enabled secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, the performing, visual and/or media arts...

 in July 2007. It also has the Artsmark

Artsmark

Artsmark is a national award scheme managed by Arts Council England. The scheme, that is open to all schools in England, recognises schools with a high level of provision in the arts.There are three levels of award:* Artsmark Gold* Artsmark Silver...

 Gold award.

Valley Park holds many activities for students e.g. focus days and trips to foreign countries. The school offers a wide range of subjects including English, Maths, History, Science, Music, P.E., Drama, D.T., I.C.T, Art, R.E., Geography, Business Studies and Modern Languages.

Buildings

Valley Park comprises several buildings. A block includes mainly ICT and Technology rooms, B block includes Mathematics, Science and Art rooms as well as the Hall.
C Block is used for Humanities, English and Modern Foreign Languages and the Arts Centre is used for the teaching of the Performing Arts. The school also has a separate gym building and an on-site farm.

Results

The school's GCSE results are average for a secondary school, with 89% of students achieving 5 A*-C grades, with 41% 5A*-C including English and Maths.
Valley Park is in the top 5% of schools nationally for Contextual Value Added

Contextual value added

Contextual value added is a statistic used by the government of the United Kingdom to assess the performance of schools.The statistic is intended to show the progress children have made whilst attending a particular school...

with a score of 1047.9