Harding Academy at a Glance

Harding Academy is a co-educational day school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Its unique learning community is committed to its mission: To educate and inspire young people to become thoughtful, creative, lifelong learners and self-disciplined, responsible, caring citizens.

  • 495 students (grade PreK–8)

  • Class size average: 18

  • Kindergarten represents 27 sending schools

  • 5 counties and 28 zip codes represented in Harding‘s student body

  • Teaching faculty: 71 percent hold advanced degrees

  • Accredited by Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) and Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)

Preparation for rigorous high school is just the beginning

Our students routinely are accepted into their first-choice high schools including the most competitive private schools in the nation. But excellent academic preparation is only part of the story. Just as important, Harding students are valued for being innovative thinkers, active classroom participants, and natural campus leaders.

A Critical Balance of Challenge and Nurture

At Harding, we believe that elementary and middle school children should be challenged and nurtured. We carefully orchestrate this critical balance to align with the students‘ needs and capabilities at each grade level. The outcome is more than preparation for rigorous high school. It is children with a deeper understanding of material, the self-assuredness to conquer any challenge, and the ability to think critically and independently for a lifetime.

Discovery Through Participation

Students at Harding are expected to try anything and everything in and out of the classroom—even things they might not feel immediately comfortable with. When a student goes out for a team or joins the band, merely summoning the courage to try is vital, and often reveals unknown, natural talent and confidence. The array of extracurricular opportunities at Harding is a vehicle for learning not only a sport or a craft, but for learning bigger lessons about oneself, and about life. You never know unless you participate.

Faculty is Key to the Harding Approach

Our faculty takes an integrated approach to education, by carefully engineering the overall, school-wide continuum that is the Harding approach to education. Working in both grade-level and school-wide subject matter teams gives our faculty the insight and the ability to maximize learning in the present while building a robust path of academic growth from grade to grade.