Ofsted rates Gesher School as Outstanding in every area for the third time

30th September 2025Website Admin

Pupils excel at this exceptional school.

We are thrilled to announce that Ofsted has for the third time rated us as Outstanding in every area. Inspectors highlighted that “pupils excel at this exceptional school,” acknowledging the highly personalised and holistic support we provide for our students. This achievement is a testament to the incredible dedication of our staff and the hard work of our students, as well as the strong relationships we foster with our parents and the wider community.

The inspectors noted, “the school has developed an ambitious curriculum that expertly meets the varied needs of its pupils.”

We’re proud that the report reflected our Project-Based Learning approach, stating that “most subjects are taught through well-considered projects that engage and excite the pupils”, and noting how our projects “offer real-world contexts and practical experiences, helping our students develop crucial language and communication skills”.

We believe every child deserves an outstanding school experience; a huge thank you goes out to everyone in our community who has supported us on this journey so we can make this happen.

Hiring: Jewish Studies Role – Teacher or TA to Teaching Route

22nd July 2025Website Admin

Jewish Studies Role – Teacher or TA to Teaching Route

(KS2/KS3 teaching/support within a creative and amended curriculum)

Part-time with flexible working hours 

Required for: ASAP

Working Days: Monday- Friday  

Pay is based on experience: MPS for qualified teachers, UQT for unqualified teachers and TA salary based on roles and responsibilities. 

Gesher School is a unique all-through school that provides a specialist, meaningful, and functional learning environment for young people with special educational needs. These needs include language, communication, and social-pragmatic difficulties. We specialise in autism spectrum challenges (ASC).

Young people are at the heart of Gesher School, where we foster a sense of belonging and community.  Our school offers a happy, safe, friendly, and stimulating environment in which young people are supported to learn, interact and have fun. We believe that all young people have the potential to achieve, but that every child is individual and requires a tailored, young person-centred approach to learning.

The Gesher approach is warm, friendly, and nurturing. Emotional health and resilience, as well as developing young people’s independence and learning, are at the core of our vision.

To deliver and achieve these outcomes, we want to add a confident, enthusiastic and highly motivated Jewish Studies KS2/KS3 educator to join our expanding team at Gesher as a teacher and/or teaching support. This post would suit a passionate, dynamic and adaptable individual who ideally has experience teaching and leading within a SEND environment. 

This post would suit someone passionate about creating meaningful personalised learning that meets all individual needs and interests. The right candidate would be open to working within a transdisciplinary team, including teachers, therapists, teaching assistants, parents, and carers. 

It would be desirable for the candidate to have experience designing/delivering interactive learning opportunities that focus on engaging students and connecting them with their faith. In addition, the candidate would need to be an upstanding role model of positive morals and values to help the students build confidence in their sense of self and become builders of meaningful relationships. 

This position offers fantastic opportunities to develop your skills as a practitioner within an innovative, supportive and collaborative team environment. 

 

We can offer you the following: 

 

  • Paid half day Friday closure in the winter months
  • 12 weeks paid holidays plus paid extra Jewish holidays throughout the year
  • Monthly well-being events and inset days 
  • Additional days off awarded following long service
  • Protected time for planning and preparation 
  • Regular social opportunities
  •  A Competitive salary 

 

You will be a fully integrated and integral member of the whole school team. See us in action here: https://vimeo.com/407682934/a9a6af1bc8 and http://gesherschool.com 

Being part of our learning community, you will be able to use your creativity and shape the way our school provides excellent learning opportunities for our young people.

For further information, please visit www.gesherschool.com. 

Please email [email protected] for an application form and any further information. 

Interviews will be organised on a rolling basis. This ad may be withdrawn if a suitable candidate is identified. 

Diversity is a core value of Gesher School. We believe the power of diversity enriches all of us by exposing us to a range of ways to understand and engage with the world, identify challenges, and to discover, design and deliver solutions. As such, we actively encourage people from a variety of backgrounds to apply for roles at our school. 

Gesher School is committed to safeguarding young people and staff. Successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced DBS check.

 

The Post Holder Will:

  • be passionate and secure in their Jewish knowledge and confident with differentiating and personalising Jewish learning
  • be comfortable supporting or developing skills to plan and deliver high quality hands on learning within a supportive team environment 
  • be comfortable with reading, writing, speaking and teaching basic Hebrew
  • be a proven, successful team player with excellent motivational and interpersonal skills

Main Areas of Duties and Responsibilities

 

  1. To work within a team to deliver high quality Jewish Studies learning across KS2 & KS3
  2. To promote the Jewish ethos, values and middot throughout the school and be a personal and professional role model for our students
  3. Planning and supporting the implementation of Enrichment Days (school celebration of festivals), Tefillah throughout the school day and Shabbat/Havdallah/Chagim assemblies
  4. To support children with their Hebrew Reading.
  5. To work alongside the teaching and learning team to accelerate pupil progress and raise attainment
  6. To support teachers with building cross curricular links, embedding Jewish learning within the projects. 
  7. To support the implementation of the B’nei Mitzvah program at Gesher. 
  8. To engage in performance management and attend training and meetings as part of professional development.
  9. To keep informed of the latest Jewish Education trends and implement appropriate strategies/schemes through training staff.
  10. To develop established and new partnerships beyond the school to support curriculum learning and development within the Jewish Community.
  11. To liaise with parents and support them in their child’s Jewish education
  12. To carry out responsibilities/duties with regard to Equal Opportunities, Safeguarding and Health and Safety Policies.

 

For further information, please visit www.gesherschool.com. 

To apply, please complete an application form that can be found here: https://gesherschool.com/about-us/join-our-team/. 

Please, complete and return your application to [email protected]. CVs will not be accepted. 

Interviews will be organised on a rolling basis. This ad may be withdrawn as a suitable candidate is identified. 

Diversity is a core value of Gesher School.  We believe the power of diversity enriches all of us by exposing us to a range of ways to understand and engage with the world, identify challenges, and to discover, design and deliver solutions. As such, we actively encourage people from a variety of backgrounds to apply for roles at our school. 

Gesher School is committed to safeguarding young people and staff. Successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced DBS check.



Minibeasts

17th July 2025Website Admin

This summer term, Gefen and Rimon worked on an exciting project about minibeasts, a topic that has a real-world impact! We looked at different minibeasts, studied their life cycles and other interesting facts about them. This topic had a strong science focus, including venturing into our field area at school and the park to investigate the minibeast habitats and classifications. We will looked at how important it is to look after minibeasts which links to our big question ‘How can we protect and support minibeasts in our local environment?’ During the second part of our project, we presented our scientific knowledge about minibeasts by creating presentations and then acting as scientists to either present live or on video for our exhibition at the end of the term. This supported our speaking and listening skills.

Teacher’s Reflections

“I think this project went really well. The pupils in my class have created some truly incredible work. For instance, their insect posters are amazing, and I am so proud of their draft and critique process to create truly outstanding pieces of work. The most challenging part of the project was trying to collect data about the different types of insects we saw. Roxbourne Park is hard to find insects in, and I think that collecting data might have been a secondary focus instead of a primary one, and therefore, I wouldn’t do it again.”

– Kathlenn McEnallay

Students’ Reflections

“I like seeing the butterflies” – Eli F

“I learnt about life cycles of minibeasts” – Eli C

“ I enjoyed the seed planting” – K

 

The Arts

17th July 2025Website Admin

This summer, students explored how art can reflect and reshape communities by studying the concept of negative and positive communities across English and the arts. Through novel studies, they analysed the features of disconnected or struggling communities and wrote powerful descriptions to capture their atmosphere. They also looked at how different forms of artistic expression—such as murals, poetry, and protest art—can bring people together and inspire change. Their final pieces combined writing and visual art to showcase how creativity can be a force for unity, empathy, and hope.

Teacher’s Reflections

“This project has been a real highlight of the term, offering our students a meaningful way to explore complex social themes through both creative writing and visual art. One of the most rewarding aspects was seeing how confidently they engaged with the concept of community, especially their ability to reflect on what makes a place feel united or divided. Their descriptive writing showed real growth in vocabulary and empathy, and their final art pieces were powerful and personal. The feedback from the summer fete, where we displayed and sold some of the studentsĘĽ work, was overwhelmingly positive. Many visitors commented on how thought-provoking and beautiful the pieces were. In hindsight, we would have loved to expand the sale beyond just the fete, perhaps through an online platform or gallery-style exhibition, to give students an even wider audience. Overall, the project successfully blended literacy, creativity, and real-world themes in a way that truly resonated with our students and the community around them.”

– Aymane Hamidi

Students’ Reflections

“Learning new things like the difference between a thriving community and a depleting community” – Aaron

“My highlight was making my artwork with lots of skulls. My skull artwork was really fun to make” – Gavriel

“The project taught me about art communities, and being a part of a community that you work in” – Bobbie

 

The Arts

17th July 2025Website Admin

For our final project this year, we explored the messages behind a variety of art forms such as poetry, music, paintings and photography. Students enjoyed studying a range of art and were able to analyse poems really well as well as how fonts and effects convey emotion. Students then applied this learning to create their own poems and photographs that will be displayed in a gallery-style exhibition. Students were tasked with creatively thinking about how sound and light can add meaning and they have worked hard in thinking about blending more than one sound for their desired effect!

Teacher’s Reflections

“Exploring a wide range of art forms was definitely interesting and it was great to see that the students were so open to analysing the meaning of different art forms. Students enjoyed writing poems about their personal interests and did really well at ensuring there was still an important message behind their work. The launch was certainly a highlight as we transformed various rooms into different creative art spaces. Next time, I would consider having the exhibition in a bigger space that allowed us to create a gallery style and spend more time making the lighting meaningful.”

– Bethany Rentall

Students’ Reflections

“My highlight of the project was writing my poem” – Rosa

“I learnt how to write a poem” – Jonah

“My highlight was the launch because it was fun and we explored different types of art” -Yitzi

 

Fabels

17th July 2025Website Admin

This term for PBL, students explored the rainforest, their geographical locations and the different layers within them, such as the emergent layer, canopy, understory, and forest floor. They discovered a range of animals that live in each layer and how these animals have adapted to their environments. They also looked at how humans adapt to life in the rainforest, particularly through the lifestyles and traditions of indigenous tribes, comparing our lifestyle with theirs. Students were scaffolded through the process of making classification keys based on their learning of animals and their adaptations in the rainforest. Alongside this, for our literacy focus students planned and wrote their own fables themed around the rainforest. To do this, they looked at the key features such as using an animal as the main character, creating a simple and engaging plot, and including a clear moral at the end.

Teacher’s Reflections

“This term’s project has been a fun one and really allowed the students to work on their creativity. They were able to think about how to make a fable that is meaningful to their own lives. I really enjoyed the practical element of taking the students to London zoo and having them see the animals first hand, making the content about adaptions and habitats more meaningful. My favourite part was the exhibition. I loved seeing the kids read to the younger children and the staff’s children. It made it so much more meaningful and enjoyable for the kids whilst writing”

– Emily Bacon

Students’ Reflections

“Making fables was my favourite part, I enjoyed creating and naming my own characters.” – AR

“I preferred the end of the project, where I got to make my fable after learning about the rainforest and its climate” – LK

“My highlight was creating characters for my fable and thinking about what they did in the rainforest” -YJ

 

Minibeasts

17th July 2025Website Admin

This Summer term, Zayit and Seorah classes will embark on an exciting extended project all about minibeasts, guided by the question: “How can we make the perfect environment for minibeasts?” Over two half terms, the children will design a welcoming outdoor space and co-create a vibrant minibeast-themed mural. A key focus will be learning to give and respond to feedback through art, with weekly opportunities to refine their work using adult modelling and peer critique. TheyĘĽll also explore what minibeasts need to survive and how they help us, recording their learning through list writing and fun digital animations using Chatterpix on the iPads. An exciting highlight will be observing real minibeasts as they grow, sequencing their life cycles, and releasing them into the new habitat. Alongside learning about habitats and what makes something living or non-living, the children will write clear instructions to explain how to create an ideal space for minibeasts—linking their scientific knowledge with purposeful writing. Through hands-on experiences, creative expression, and scientific discovery, we’ll be deepening our understanding of the miniature world around us — and how to care for it. We can’t wait to see and share all the incredible learning that unfolds this Summer!

Teacher’s Reflections

“I think the project went really well! Introducing feedback and critique was quite
challenging but doing it through art was effective. I think the project had some really nice
technology elements (iPad literacy typing, Chatterpix, AI habitats and green screen)
which really worked and the children engaged well with it”

– Lucy Robinson

Students’ Reflections

“My highlight was our minibeast park afternoon.” – Harrison

“Insects like to live in places like fields” – Bobby

“I learned about about that we need to take care of insects, like caterpillars.” -Aaron