Gallery

Our gallery shows a selection of photographs from across our Academy.

CEO Blog – Destinations Champions

CEO Blog – Destinations Champions

  CEO Blog - Destinations Champions I can't quite believe that we've made it to December already, but here we are, and the countdown to Christmas is well and truly underway! This week, I would like to point you all in the direction of our newest New Bridge...

CEO Blog – 24.11.23

CEO Blog – 24.11.23

CEO Blog - 24.11.23 Happy Friday, everyone. I'm keeping it brief this week, but I wanted to give you an update on what's been going on behind the scenes at New Bridge... I met with the Directors at New Bridge Horizons, talking about the exciting partnerships we build...

CEO Blog – 17.11.23

CEO Blog – 17.11.23

CEO Blog - 17.11.23 This week has been another busy week for all of us at New Bridge, and I'm proud of our staff teams for pulling together and continuing to offer our students and young people the very best, even when it's already dark by the time most of them are...

CEO Blog – 10.11.23

CEO Blog – 10.11.23

CEO Blog - 10.11.23 This week, it has been good to see each of our sites commemorating Remembrance Day in their own way. The creativity and thought that our staff have put into these 'Remembrance' themed activities is brilliant, and testament to their ingenuity. It...

CEO Blog (3.11.23) – Welcome Back

CEO Blog (3.11.23) – Welcome Back

CEO Blog (3.11.23) - Welcome Back To everyone who has just had half term, I want to say, 'welcome back', and that I hope you had the opportunity to spend some quality time with friends and family over the break. This first term is usually the toughest, and the October...

Graham

I had an interesting meeting with the Department for Education on Wednesday that really helped me to understand the context in which our schools operate.

The national data shows quite clearly that the number of children who are in support of an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) that are now attending special schools as opposed to having their needs met within mainstream is increasing. The latest data suggests that almost 50% of these children and young people are now in special schools in and around England. Mainstream schools are now excluding children and young people with EHCPs at a higher number than ever before. To further complicate the picture, more and more children with ‘additional needs’ appear to be being educated at home.

All of these statistics relate directly to all our schools where we see rising rolls and increased waiting lists. It could be argued that increasing numbers is ‘good news’ but actually, from a strategic perspective, it is becoming increasingly challenging to manage. These are some of the reasons:

  • Our schools were designed with an optimum number in mind
  • We believe we work best with certain group sizes and adult to child ratios
  • It’s unfair to expose our children to a constant churn of new pupils and students
  • Our curriculum offer is designed to work with certain numbers of children
  • Recruiting appropriately qualified staff is a challenge in itself (initial teacher training recruitment is down 30% again this year)
  • Ensuring staff are inducted into all of our schools puts considerable pressure on our training and development teams

So what can we do about it? In the short term, our business teams have put bids in to the Education Funding Agency to try and extend our buildings. This will really help us put in extra classrooms and specialist teaching areas and enable us to meet some of the present challenges. We need to work with our 2 teaching schools to bring more teachers into our teacher training programmes – this will allow us to grow our own teachers of the future.

Most importantly, I believe, we need to work with mainstream schools to get them to have a greater understanding of the needs of children and young people with additional needs. We can’t keep building extensions to our schools and increasing our rolls. Myself and Anne Redmond, The Executive Principal at Kingfisher, have been commissioned by the Opportunity Area to develop this work – it really is needed as a matter of urgency. I’ll arrange some meetings later in the year to keep you all appraised of the work.

Have a great weekend,

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here

Location

New Bridge Multi Academy Trust
Roman Road
Hollinwood
Oldham
OL8 3PH

School Hours

M-F: 8am – 4pm
Weekends: Closed

Phone & Email

0161 870 9386

info@newbridgegroup.org