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Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

12th June 2023Website Admin

Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

David Jackson

Teaching: the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships

This short article is about the second phase of the process Gesher School undertook to design the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment they knew they would need to do a brilliant job for children who learn differently, as they moved from primary into their secondary education; from childhood into adolescence, from primary to all-through.

The ‘school design lab’ process – eight workshops involving about 100 stakeholders, completed in March 2021 – resulted in a blueprint for this new school ambition. You can see the final version of the Gesher School Blueprint here: https://gesherschool.com/about-us/blueprint/.

It is worth looking at – for its comprehensiveness, its ambition, its philosophical coherence and the obvious seriousness of intent. Beyond that, there is much to recommend in the evident way it unites a school community (internal and external) around a shared mission and sets out the practical requirements needed to achieve this.

The process to develop the blueprint began by asking “What outcomes do we want all our learners to achieve?” We started with a pie chart (six slices), one of which already had “good exam results” filled in, as a given. The task then is to populate the other five slices. (It could be six slices saying “good exam results” if that’s the only outcome that matters – but in a decade of doing this activity, exams have never featured more than once.) The result? Agreement about the purpose of the school and the outcomes for all learners that matter to the school community.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Having agreed purpose and outcomes, the next stage in the process was the development of a set of design principles to achieve these, which form the values and practice architecture – the “laws with leeway” – for the school. In that process the Gesher team engaged with the designs of highly successful schools around the world, in a process known as horizon scanning, to find inspiration and ideas that would help them to learn from the very best that exists and has evidence of success.

You will find more on the Gesher school design process in The Bridge Issue 2.

Having the purpose, outcomes and design principles agreed upon, the next couple of workshops focused on assessment, pedagogy and curriculum.

Assessment

The Gesher Blueprint, then, sets out the school’s desired outcomes. They include: skilled for the future workplace; confident in their sense of self; builders of meaningful relationships; and ethical and responsible citizens. Finding meaningful ways to assess, recognise, accredit and value these – to validate them – is the next stage in the design challenge.

Another desired outcome is qualified for the next stage, and while existing accreditation pathways can obviously fit that bill to an extent, they don’t get close to assessing “meaningful relationships” or “confidence in sense of self”.

Fortunately, there is a different audience for some of these outcomes – the students themselves, their parents, peers, community members, etc – and there are known ways of doing it. There are exhibitions, digital badges, portfolios (real or digital), records of achievement, transcripts or even a unique, composite and personalised School Diploma owned and endorsed by all stakeholders, incorporating a range of such validation methods.

Professionals generally agree that schools should be free to assess what they value, rather than driven to value what is assessed. Gesher’s Blueprint states that it will generate unique profiles… affirm talents… recognise unconventionally expressed achievements… and work of relevance to the community and the world. This ambition is shared by many schools and there are, as we have seen, a range of possible ways of assessing what is valued. However, few schools do. Gesher, in this respect – as in many others – aspires to be a “beautiful exception”.

Pedagogy

Ask secondary teachers about their professional knowledge-base and most will probably talk about subject expertise. This is not their professional knowledge-base: it is what they bring in service of their professional knowledge-base. Lots of geographers or scientists or linguists don’t teach.

Teachers’ professional knowledge-base is the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships. It is the creation of apt pedagogy combined with personalised knowledge and understanding of learners. In other words, teachers are designers. They create great pedagogical designs together.

Only, in most schools, they don’t.

To do this requires scope for interdisciplinary planning; it involves real-world relevant tasks (to make learning matter); it will deploy a repertoire of assessment methods (appropriate to the task, relevant for each person); and it requires time deployment that allows on-site and community learning. This is different from 25 one-hour lessons. It also requires that teachers have time together (to design together).

For Gesher, and for most of the astonishing schools around the world that were studied in the horizon scanning, Project-Based Learning (PBL) provided at least part of the pedagogical solution. Real links have been made with the professional PBL knowledge-base from High Tech High and Expeditionary Learning Schools as international examples and with XP and School 21 as domestic ones. Additionally, Gesher commissioned the support of Imagine If to help facilitate its journey.

Gesher, together with a number of other schools of course, deploys time and space flexibly (the subject of a future article); combines a core of subject teaching with flexible interdisciplinary learning opportunities (PBL); deploys a range of assessment approaches relevant to the task; and, because it is a SEND school (although all schools are SEND schools), integrates into learning designs therapeutic approaches and support.

And these rich approaches, whilst great for students, are also fulfilling for the professional lives of teachers.

Curriculum

If pedagogy is how we teach stuff and how learners learn it, and assessment, broadly speaking, is the range of ways we let students and other stakeholders know how well they are doing, then curriculum is simply the range of material – the content – we want students to learn.

For most secondary schools the curriculum is pretty straightforward: divide what we teach into “subjects” and have specialist subject teachers deliver it in lessons lasting about an hour. The learning week, for learners, is therefore a jigsaw puzzle of disconnected hour-long subject lessons (French, then PE, then English, then Science, then Maths….) and fragmented relationships.

There is another way.

Gesher’s curriculum statement emphasises “the application of knowledge through real-world assignments and projects… rooted in Jewish values… highly personalised and responsive to individual interests, aptitudes and needs”. Much is packed into those 24 words:

Application
Real-world uses
Projects and assignments
Overt values components
Highly personalised

What all this means practically at Gesher is that the curriculum contains all the subject knowledge required, some of it taught as it has always been taught, but much of it designed into projects, with real-world relevance (perhaps real-world need) within which students express agency, personalise their contributions and also integrate or enact the values from relevant parts of their culture. They might be assessed in a range of ways, singly or in combination – tests, exhibitions, vivas, presentations, peer evaluation, portfolios, or whatever.

Endnote

The Blueprint design shows graphically that desired outcomes (purposes) frame everything and lead to school design principles facilitative of those outcomes. In other words, “Here are the things we want all learners to achieve and to do and so we need our school to be designed with features like this.”

The heart, the driver, the energy source to achieve this is the integrated and interrelated core of assessment, pedagogy and curriculum. Beyond that, there is a range of further features related to technology, time and space; culture, leadership and professional development; parental partnerships and community relationships.

More of that next time, perhaps.

Professional Prompt Questions

If your school was to do the pie chart activity – the six outcome areas that really matter to you – what would be included? (You could try it as a staff workshop activity.)

What scope is there in your school for teachers from different subject disciplines to plan learning together? What could there be?

Do you agree with the definition of teaching at the start of this piece? If so, what implications might that have for your teaching or your school?

Creating Better Schools by Design

15th December 2022Website Admin

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

Ask most people to draw a house and nine times out of ten the house they imagine will be a square box, with four square windows, a pitched roof with a chimney, and often some smoke curling into the sky.

We share a mental model — a blueprint — for what a house is and should look like. We don’t stop to wonder:

Does our house have to be square or could it be a different shape?
Should it be one storey high, or two, or three?
How many windows of what size should there be, really?
What purpose does the chimney serve?

Our shared ideas about schools are fixed in much the same way.

There are variations, but our mental model for school tends to include classrooms, corridors, rows of desks, students grouped according to age, one-hour lessons, subject teaching, tests, and so on. This model is based on schools designed in the past. We don’t stop to question whether the school, which we are after all drawing in the C21, should be — needs to be — very different from the blueprint created decades ago. We might ask:

What ideas about learning are informing the layout of our school? What might classrooms look like if we thought of them as places where great learning can happen?
Does all learning need to be packaged into ‘subjects’?
Are one-hour lessons the best unit of learning?
Is one teacher with 25 students better than two teachers with 50 students?
Why are all students assessed at the same time when they mature differently?
Do we have to assess by written exams emphasising memory?

… and so on.

Designing a new school for real is a chance to ask questions like these, and to ensure that the new school is more than just an improvement on the existing model.

“Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.”

At Gesher School, staff, students and parents know how badly a change to the model is needed because most of Gesher’s learners have struggled in schools like the one most of us would draw. So, Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.

Gesher was transitioning from a highly successful primary school to becoming an all-through learning community and needed to find a new school building and facilities, recruit staff, create a secondary school curriculum and reframe its mission and identity.

The leaders of Gesher School knew they needed to go way beyond improvements on the existing model, to design a whole new way of thinking about and doing school, in ways that learned from and built on their experience with primary-age children. They asked:

How might we design an all-through school that will offer success, enhanced self-esteem, personal efficacy, and progression opportunities for all our young people?

Secondly, in doing so, how can we involve multiple stakeholders in our design process?

Thirdly, how might we stand on the shoulders of existing practices around the world?

The design process that Gesher School entered into comprised eight workshops, each involving different stakeholders, which resulted in a school blueprint for:

A bold vision and purpose; and
A set of values-based design principles; which were
Brought to life in plans for a range of innovative features that add up to a very different kind of school.

Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.

Each issue of The Bridge will address an aspect of Gesher’s school redesign process. This issue focuses on the first two of the eight school design workshops that Gesher School undertook, which concerned (i) purpose and (ii) design principles.

(i) Purpose

Gesher’s discussions about purpose started with identifying their ‘non-negotiables’. Non-negotiables tell everyone what is and is not on the table; what is and is not within the scope of the school design team to change. Examples might be ‘no selection by ability’ or ‘the school will be co-education’ or, in Gesher’s case:

We are a school for a specific cohort of children with SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic issues.
We are a Jewish faith school.
We utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to authentic issues and problems.

These clear non-negotiables influenced design features relating to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, to faith observance and understanding, and to the design of curriculum and pedagogy.

A further key defining issue for Gesher to articulate was purpose – the vision and outcomes to which the school community would aspire. Being clear about what the school had to achieve with and for students; about the purpose of learning; about what matters for the community of the school — staff, students and parents – was an essential bedrock of the design process.

Within the current system, aiming for good examination outcomes is a given, and if that was all that mattered, then job done. However, during the workshop, through extensive discussion – and many post-its – it became clear that exam success on its own was not nearly enough. In brief, the outcomes Gesher agreed are that young people should become:

Skilled for the future workplace
Qualified for the next stage (exam results plus)
Independent learners
Confident in their sense of self
Builders of meaningful relationships
Ethical and responsible citizens.

These, one might hope, could be purposes shared by most if not all schools, but two things qualify them as exceptional in Gesher’s context. The first is the inclusiveness of the intent. They are purposes for all students, regardless of their prior educational history or unique needs. The second is to remember that Gesher is a school for children with identified SEND needs, most of whom have been unable to thrive in mainstream schools.

“Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them.”

(ii) Design Principles

Workshop two was exclusively concerned with design principles and involved staff at the school considering the question: What would be the design principles or features of a school that can confidently achieve these outcomes for all its learners?

Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them. They used this as a basis to shape their own, then tested the resulting principles they created together using personas of children at Gesher, asking: Would this work and how would it work for Amy or Peter?

Next Time — Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

Agreement on these three components — the non-negotiables, purposes and design principles — precedes work on designing the more practical features of a school. Clear purposes provide a constant reminder of exactly what we aspire to achieve with and for learners and their families. Design principles provide the guiding architecture that relates to these purposes. They are ‘laws with leeway’ that frame what we do and how we do it. They are also the features that unify and inspire those who work in a school, and they guide and discipline decision-making.

With these three in place, the design process moves to consideration of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that will be informed by and consistent with the design principles and which will enable every student to achieve the outcome ambitions. That is for next time.

Designing New Schools in the USA

In America, there is a long tradition of creating new school designs. Some of the most successful schools in the world have been created in this way – Expeditionary Learning schools; High Tech High (some of whose resources we share later); Big Picture Learning schools; New Tech Network are all examples. The Gates Foundation alone funded more than 2,500 ‘small school models’ across the United States, and New York alone has 200.

Not all of these new school models have been equally successful, of course. However, their students consistently outperform their peers in conventionally sized and structured high schools with comparable demographics. There are some common design features across the majority of these models — and they are very different from the conventional UK school — they all:

Focus on the centrality of relationships and personalising learning — have ‘advisory’, where advisory is the soul of the school, symbolising relational support for students
Include project-based learning, an engaging and empowering pedagogical model, which also requires teachers to collaborate as designers of learning
Have a pervasive cultural identity and school-level ownership of what matters, including what is assessed and how and by whom it is assessed
Facilitate powerful and sustained adult learning.

The Cost of Not Having New Models in the UK…

Not to foster innovation in school design means that we constantly focus on striving to improve the existing school model – a model more than 100 years old and out of date.

It is a model with multiple features crying out for redesign. For example, it has failed to achieve equitable outcomes, or to address socio-economic challenges, or to engage disengaged learners — or to fully engage most learners, for that matter. Nor has it provided teachers with an intellectually challenging profession, or excited and involved parents around the experience of their children.

Professional Prompt Questions

The design process described above is effective applied to existing schools as well as new ones — revisiting purposes and design features together as a prelude to reviewing wider practices. Might this have value for your school?

The review detailed above distilled six clear outcomes that Gesher is committed to evidencing for all learners. Does your school have similar clarity about its purposes?

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

15th December 2022Website Admin

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

Ali Durban & Paul Ramsbottom OBE, The Wolfson Foundation

Paul Ramsbottom OBE is Chief Executive of The Wolfson Foundation, an independent grant-making charity, funding programmes and activities throughout the UK. The Foundation’s fundamental aim is to improve the civic health of society, mainly through education and research. He is also the Chief Executive of a linked charity, the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust.

Gesher School was delighted to receive a grant from the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust in 2021 to adapt and equip a Maker Space in our building. We value enormously our relationship with Paul and with the Wolfson charities because our values and mission are closely aligned and we recognise the important role that philanthropic organisations like The Wolfson Foundation can play in helping schools who want to do things differently to realise their ambitions.

We asked Paul to share with us his thinking about the role of philanthropy in education in the 21st century. Here’s what he told us…

Discussions about the role of philanthropy in the English education system have tended to polarise around two extreme positions.

At one extreme is the view that education in modern society is the preserve of Government alone, and that there is therefore little or no role for philanthropy. This is a view frequently expressed on social media, often by people who are knowledgeable about or involved in education.

At the other extreme is an articulation of a role for philanthropy that in some ways lets the Government off the hook, by plugging gaps that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

In between these two extremes, and in reality, there are at least three important roles that philanthropy plays:

The first is to support innovation in education; to fund schools, colleges and universities to trial new ideas. By being the provider and underwriter of risk capital in the education system, philanthropists enable educators to do things that the Government can’t or won’t do or support.

The second is to fund capital infrastructure projects necessary for ambitious organisations to fulfil elements of their strategic vision, which would otherwise be unachievable. Buildings and equipment are difficult to fund from statutory sources and can rarely be afforded from core funding. Philanthropy can provide the additional funding that organisations need to really allow them to fly.

The third role for philanthropy, beyond funding for innovation or infrastructure, is as part of a wider ecosystem of organisations, including Government, professional educators and civil society, who are stakeholders in education and who work, together and separately, to bring about system change that will benefit children and young people.

Some philanthropists take a campaigning and lobbying approach, which can be extremely effective. The Sutton Trust, for instance, with its focus on education for social mobility, consistently campaigns for better support in our education system for our most disadvantaged children and young people.

The Wolfson Foundation is not a campaigning organisation; on occasion, however, the Foundation funds research that grows system capacity and capability and contributes significantly to the body of knowledge necessary to support system change.

Recently the Foundation has invested heavily in children and young people’s mental health, with significant funding going to school and community-based initiatives which aim to help children struggling with anxiety and depression.

Already a growing problem, the pandemic exacerbated challenges facing children and young people, who are presenting in higher numbers than ever before with poor mental health. It’s a huge problem facing many Western societies, including our own. However, it is also a problem that is poorly understood. Whilst we might all share some intuition about why this generation of young people seems to be more troubled than previous generations — the prevalence and role of social media, for instance — the reality is that we don’t actually know. Even if our hunch is right, we need evidence to be able to take on social media companies and persuade them to make the necessary changes.

The Wolfson Foundation is funding research into a range of practice approaches that aim to build young people’s resilience to deal with the challenges that life unfortunately throws at us all, as well as improving access to high-quality therapy and clinical support.

An example of this is the new Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health in Cardiff. Waiting times in the current system are lamentable and the answer can’t simply be to try and provide more counsellors than ever. In the meantime, children and young people continue to struggle without the help they need.

Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.

We need complete systemic change and there is a role for philanthropy in achieving that, both in terms of the research we can fund and providing support for innovators who are trying different ways of working.

Making Philanthropy Accessible to Everyone

If we truly believe that philanthropy can and should have a role in a modern education system, then it becomes really important that access to philanthropic funding shouldn’t simply be the preserve of schools that happen to have an affluent parent community or have professional or fundraising skills in their governing body. Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.

Over the last couple of years, The Wolfson Foundation has been working with a number of partners to create a completely free framework and toolkit for every school in the country. It’s a kind of A to Z or ‘How To…’ of fundraising for schools hoping to look, perhaps for the first time, beyond their parents and local communities for financial support for their plans.

Professional Prompt Questions

Is there a project in your community that needs transformation, perhaps a physical learning space or a bold idea?

Can you capture why it is so critical to your students, and how it will change their outcomes? Will you be able to evidence this?

Have you researched the costs to fund the project and produced a budget to support it?

Are you aware of opportunities for philanthropic support in your area? Is your organisation and proposal eligible for funding? Are there other funding opportunities beyond your local community?

Could the framework and toolkit mentioned above be of value to your school?

Changing Schools, Changing Lives

15th December 2022Website Admin

Changing Schools, Changing Lives

Sam Dexter

Authentic Voices

Reflecting on the content that appeared in the first issue of The Bridge, we noticed a pattern. There was a lot from the perspective of neurotypical adult experts, but very little from the perspective of neurodiverse young people. This worried us. How could we be creating an educational journal about educating neurodiverse young people, without including the voices of these young people? This is clearly not right.

So, in this issue, and all future issues, there will be a dedicated space reserved solely for pupil voice — featuring the first-hand views of neurodiverse young people. For this issue, we spoke to five young people about how life at Gesher is different from the experiences they had in their previous schools.

Different in the Classroom

All of the students we spoke to described how learning at Gesher was different from their previous schools. One student said, ‘I didn’t learn anything… all I ever did was play around and make things’. When asked what it is like now at Gesher that differs he replied by saying: ‘I have more support here’ and ‘I like learning more… I like learning more so I get even smarter.’

Another student, also speaking on the theme of support, told us how in his previous school:

‘I was learning, learning, learning but didn’t understand one thing and there was no support for me. They just said, you have to do it yourself… In this school, there is a lot more support, like if you don’t understand something, they explain it in a different way.’

The students told us how things were taught differently at Gesher. ‘I find learning better because it’s taught differently. We get to do PBL (Project-Based Learning)… which is fun and creative.’ For another student, not having the pressure of traditional assessment was a huge relief. ‘They [student’s previous school] had lots of tests. And I’m actually glad that my mum put me in this school because otherwise, I would have had to deal with lots and lots and lots of SATs exams.’

The approach to emotional regulation helps in the classroom.

A common theme related to how Gesher’s approach to emotional regulation also helps them in the classroom. ‘I can ask for a break and that means I’ll go outside and when I’m ready I’ll come back’. Another student described how, if the learning environment was too noisy, he knew to ask for ear defenders or he had the freedom simply to find them himself.

Different Outside the Classroom

Another feature shared was how school life is different outside the classroom at Gesher. Around this topic, two main themes emerged: friendship and the school’s therapy dogs. Relationships are a big focus at Gesher (they matter a lot for neurodiverse young people) and on the topic of friendship, students explained how Gesher provided them with the opportunity to build new relationships. ‘School can help us make new friends if we meet more people.’ [That same student went on to ask if the purpose of TThe Bridge was to bring more students to Gesher, suggesting that if it was, there would be ‘more friends also’.]

Other students felt that Gesher had allowed them to develop new interests and passions. ‘I like the fact that school can help me get interested in different things, [friend’s name] has got me interested in Minecraft and stuff like that.’ Another interviewee emphasised that Gesher provided the opportunity and support to build new relationships.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all students spoke enthusiastically about the positive impact that the visits of Gesher’s therapy dogs, Puplinda and Toby, had on their well-being:

Gesher student: I like it when Puplinda comes to visit.

Interviewer: Why?

Gesher Student: She makes me feel happy and calm.

Others spoke about being excited when Puplinda came to their class and were very concerned that she hadn’t visited for two weeks due to an operation (she is recovering well and will be back in Therapy Dog action before this article goes live).

The improvements mentioned are being followed up.

Always Room For Improvement

As well as hearing their views about what was different between their previous school and Gesher, we also asked what could improve their experience. The most commonly mentioned area for improvement was the playground, with students discussing how there could be more exercise equipment, more swings and slides, and some more creative activities. Another liked that the playground was a ‘very big area’ but felt that the surface material is ‘very tough… every time I slip a bit, I end up with everything in the cut, like rocks and everything.’

This part of each interview was important because it helped to give students agency over the process — not just wanting to hear the positives, but also to learn how we can make things even better. Mindful also of not wanting simply to be a passive ear for young people’s views and concerns, the improvements they mentioned are being followed up by one of Gesher’s Deputy Heads.

For Practitioners: Things We Have Learned

A useful mantra for thinking about ‘student voice’, especially that of neurodiverse young people, is ‘nothing about us without us’. As such, reflect on something within your setting that you want to change/are already planning to change. How might you gather the views of some of your neurodiverse learners about what this change might mean for them?
The process of gathering student perspectives and insights with neurodiverse young people can be more time-consuming because there are additional barriers compared to collecting the views of neurotypical young people. We have learned (a) to have a trusted adult ask the questions (quite often not a teacher); (b) to conduct the interview away from the classroom, and (c) to keep it short!
The use of visuals can support students to share their views about something, especially where a verbal interview doesn’t play to a young person’s strengths. In the Resources for Schools section of this issue we have included an example of the ‘Three Houses’ model, a simple tool to elicit the view of a young person who finds it challenging to verbally express their feelings.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all five young people who gave up some of their playtime to share their views with us, and to Gesher’s Deputy Head and Dramatherpist, Mr Chris, who was the ‘trusted person’ who conducted the group interview.

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’

15th December 2022Website Admin

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’

David Jackson

Gesher School serves children who learn differently — many of whom have had highly stressful school experiences previously.

To do a brilliant job for these children, we want to be the best that we can be — the best in well-being, best in assessment, in project-based learning design and facilitation, in exhibitions, best community links, best staff development, best parent engagement, skilled in the use of technology and so on. Not best or better in any comparative way — just the best that we can be to serve the young people, adults and families who are part of our school community…

We need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be.

To do that we need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be, and one feature of that is to reach out to people who have relevant knowledge and experience to help us with dilemmas or ‘problems of practice’ and to debate with us key elements of our ambition. One strategy for this is Critical Friendship Groups.

Critical Friendship Groups (CFGs)

Gesher started as a primary school and is now an all-through school. For the first 18 months of its existence as an all-through school, it is emphatically in learning mode. We plan to harness the goodwill and professional generosity of the school’s multiple partners and connections to establish a small number of CFGs around key themes that are central to the school’s success.

At the time of writing we have held one CFG so far, on the theme of well-being, when we asked our critical friends:

How do you empower young people to manage and own their own mental and emotional well-being through adolescence and beyond school?

Eight people from backgrounds as diverse as the Anna Freud Centre and Place2Be, and as geographically spread as Bolton to Israel, met online for two hours to engage in a facilitated conversation, the outcomes of which will be featured in Issue 3 of The Bridge. We plan to share both a think-piece distilled from that session and also a tool or framework that might be of practical value to teachers.

Critical Friendship Group Objectives

There are four objectives to CFGs, which are:

To connect Gesher with advanced practice and thinking around issues linked to the school’s ambitions, and to the needs of the SEND sector.
To build relationships with people who have experience, knowledge and insights that can help to advance Gesher’s work and the work of the sector.
To generate usable knowledge and ideas around key ‘problems of practice’.
To create an informal space that allows people to engage and contribute to Gesher’s evolution.

We hope, of course, to learn a huge amount. And we plan to share the things that we learn which are of collective value through the journal.

For the moment, we offer up the idea of ‘fireside chats’ with a group of people who know stuff and who care about young people’s learning, as one that might have value for other schools.

Our journey to Outstanding: How our second Ofsted inspection has proved real change is possible.

12th October 2022Ali Durban

by Ali Durban, Gesher Co-Founder

Gesher School started life almost 10 years ago. An idea driven by a difficult lived experience of the education system for our own children and a vision and desire to create something better for many other children. The first couple of years were intense. Sarah, my co-founder, and I met in a school playground, at the time we had children in the same class at the school. We both had full time jobs, young families and, although we were educated, neither of us had a background in education.

It was an ambitious project.

And so, we educated ourselves, researching data, visiting schools across the UK and understanding the daily struggles of the unmet needs of what we discovered to be thousands of children and young people with mild to moderate learning differences.

We knew there was a desperate need for change, something transformative. We began a dialogue with our local Jewish community in North London, and advocated that, with the right start in life, this marginalised group of children and young people, who were typically under-served and failed by the current education system, could have different outcomes in life.

We surrounded ourselves with experts and poured the very best of our shared knowledge into our collective vision. However, translating an idea into a reality needs more than passion, purpose, and knowledge, it needs funding.

So, at the same time we learnt to fundraise and to share our vision with people who cared about this group of children and their outcomes in life as deeply as we did. They too believed that real change was possible. We call them Gesher Champions and together we raised £2m to kickstart Gesher.

In 2017, Gesher opened as a primary special school in Cricklewood with seven children who were differently able and who had learning differences. Seven families who had taken that leap of faith with us. These children were going to have a different educational experience. The feeling on the first day of seeing those children was immense. A year later OfSTED visited and judged Gesher to be Outstanding in all Areas and, as the inspector shared his views, we all cried tears of joy.

The school continued to develop and grow until eventually our site was full, with waiting lists and our primary children who were graduating had no specialist secondary schools to progress onto. Then the pandemic hit, and amidst the challenges of supporting our children and families we were desperately looking for premises to expand and once again the funds to support our growth.

The universe tilted in our direction and in 2020, Gesher relocated to Pinner and opened as an all-through school, at full capacity it will be a school for 120 students aged 5 to 16. To date we have raised over £5m with our Gesher Champions to support this second phase of growth. Our vision remains the same, to build upon the success of the primary school and deliver an exceptional learning environment for children and young people who are differently able.

We have been working hard over the last two years to create a new evidence-based model of teaching and learning for students with SEN that is academically rigorous with the long-term ambition of sharing our practice with other schools and learning communities. Joining the dots and creating system change from the ground upwards.

This September, Ofsted visited a second time and, under the new inspection framework judged Gesher to be Outstanding in all Areas again. Given that we were expecting a ‘Good’ under the new framework, once again we were floored and in tears. In particular, the inspectors noted:

Pupils receive an exceptional quality of provision. Leaders have designed an ambitious curriculum which is taught by the school’s expert staff.

Together, the curriculum and therapies encourage pupils’ independent living skills and emotional well-being very successfully.

Therapists, teachers and teaching assistants work together seamlessly as one team. They truly understand how to meet pupils’ varied special educational needs. While staff are nurturing, they also have high expectations of all pupils. As a result, pupils work hard and learn well.

We are all immensely proud of this.

Gesher is a learning community filled with agency, purpose and passion which puts children and young people at the heart of school life and this achievement is more than an endorsement.

This is a signal of hope for thousands of differently-abled children and young people and perhaps most importantly – an offering of what is possible in education.

-ends-

Reflection from Gesher’s co-founder Sarah Sultman

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

A reflection from Gesher’s Co-Founder, Sarah Sultman, on the experience of mobilising the creation of Gesher School

Before we could go to any donors in the community we spent over a year researching the need in the community.

We began by hosting what were essentially ʼtrunk style eveningsʼ in local synagogues and around kitchen tables, where we invited people through Facebook and word of mouth, to come and hear about our plans and to gather people who wanted to get on board. It wasnʼt us dictating to the community our vision but more like sharing our ideas and asking them – what did they want in a school, did they have skills they could help us with.

We knew that ideas alone werenʼt enough to create a school. We needed an entire community of volunteers to freely give up their time and expertise to get the project up and running and we were fortunate to have met so many remarkable people who so enthusiastically wanted to get on board.

The first people that came on board were a retired lawyer and an accountant – we needed to register as a charity and to have some sort of an idea about the finances involved in setting up a school.

This very basic, crude, mind map is from 2014 but this was our starting position! This led us to meet all the people that came on board. It gives you just a small idea of all the different areas we have to find expertise in. We created a network with people introducing us to other people as well as cold calling.

I think our passion, determination and tenacity went a long way but really, once we were armed with the data and the numbers, it was obvious that this school was desperately needed. Most people didnʼt take that much convincing.

We have heard of many others wanting to set up a school and many of them give up before theyʼve really even started. It takes commitment, time and dedication. We thought we could do it in a year but it took us from 2013 – 2017 when our first pupils arrived at the school. There is no official ʻhow to set up a SEN school from scratchʼ manual. If there was, it might have saved us a year or two but equally we wouldnʼt have acquired the knowledge that we did by educating ourselves every step of the way.

How to Lead Profound Educational Change: A Reflection from Big Change

29th March 2022realsmart admin

How to Lead Profound Educational Change

Caitlin Ross and Caireen Goddard, Big Change

Have you looked at our traditional systems of education and thought, “Surely we can do better for young people?” Big Change is an organisation that is generating a national conversation around ten hopes for how we could do just that.

Gesher School caught up with Caireen Goddard and Caitlin Ross, who lead the impact team at Big Change, to hear about these hopes and what it might take to change the system.

Gesher
First of all, thanks for speaking to us today and for letting us hear about the hopes of Big Change. I’m going to dive straight in: What needs to change about the education system?

Caireen Goddard
When I came to Big Change I had spent a lot of time in and around the education system, including learning from educators in the UK and examples from around the world where people were doing things really differently. I recognised the frustration of people in our schools and local authorities who wanted to do things differently, and to support young people in different ways, but who had blockers put in their way or were under pressure to deliver against certain kinds of outcomes. There was, or is, a double tension of a narrowing focus from above together with a lack of autonomy or freedom to lead education in a way they thought was really needed for young people.

I think it boils down to two really key questions:

What should be the purpose of education?
Whatʼs really important for children and young people to learn – for themselves and for society?

Across 2021 we ran a Big Education Conversation where we asked these two questions. Most people we heard from agreed that we need to rethink the purpose of education and shift to a system where childrenʼs enjoyment of and engagement in learning is paramount.

Gesher
It sounds like thereʼs a real drive for change, but what should that change look like?

Caireen
Thatʼs right, we know thereʼs an appetite for change. And we think that ʻbig changeʼ would:

Recognise that a one-size-fits-all model actually fits no-one.Even children who are ʻdoing wellʼ within the current system arenʼt satisfied with it because of the modes of learning and pressure from exams.
Create an inclusive learning system that prepares all children well for the real world.
Take a broader perspective on who our educators are. If we want our young people to learn skills that equip them for life, look at the degree to which the broader community,
employers, parents, and young people themselves are involved in the nature of learning provision.

Gesher
So, tell me more about Big Change and your hopes for changing the system?

Caitlin Ross
We want to be a catalyst for change by working with and through others. We want to learn from others and create the space for hope and ambition, and to disrupt the status quo. Our Ten Hopes, which have been published as a call to action to frame our work and invite others on the journey, have really resonated with a lot of people. Instead of getting caught up in how negative the system and all its problems can feel, we wanted to orientate towards the hopeful.

Gesher
With that in mind, how do you work with change-makers like Gesher?

Caitlin
I lead on our grantmaking work and was lucky enough to be part of Gesherʼs application process. Before we met today, I took a look back at their application to see what it was that stood out.

What we really liked, and what we would look for with change-makers, was the drive to challenge the status quo on what education is and how it can be delivered. We really liked their goal around ensuring that all pathways through education and into work are valued, and also:

An ability to think outside the box about what traditional models of ʻsuccessʼ should be
The ambition for young people with special educational needs and disabilities to have meaningful professional and wider lives
The desire to convene everyone who will be supporting these young people at different stages of their lives
Challenging common sense and really looking at what young people with SEND need to live rich, fulfilling lives
The drive to bring other schools and professionals along with them on their learning journey. They really want all ships to rise with their tide and that is the perfect service we can provide for children.

Gesher
What advice would you give to Gesher, and others, when trying to implement change?

Caitlin
You need the right conditions to see these goals through. So, I would really say that you need:
• An ability to think about the whole system
• To be open to insights from elsewhere, all over the world
• To observe what you are learning and question yourself – to interrogate
• Be ambitious about the change you want to create with and for young people, while being humble enough to work collaboratively and learn from others
• To be strategically generous – donʼt hold on to your knowledge
• Recognise that you will always be learning.

Gesher
It feels like this could be quite a daunting challenge to take on. Whatʼs one thing people who want to lead change should think about?

Caireen
I donʼt think itʼs helpful to give the impression that any of this is straightforward or easy. Being a path-finder means you are taking a risk in the context of young people and their learning, which understandably isnʼt a hugely risk-inclined environment. I think itʼs about finding opportunities to do things differently and being confident to try new approaches. Looking to others for support and inspiration, both domestically and internationally, because we need real collaboration over competition.

Caitlin
I agree with that and would also say, donʼt just surround yourself with like-minded people. One way to create significant change over time is to collaborate and align with people who
have quite different views from you. Those unlikely alliances are really important, but like all partnerships they take a degree of willingness and trust to make happen, as well as humility.

Gesher
This has been fascinating. Just to end, do you have any final thoughts or advice you would like to give to Gesher or other change-makers?

Caireen
I would say that itʼs easy to lose sight of the quick wins, so celebrate the small successes!

Caitlin
I think having a clear vision of the change you want to create for and with young people and putting them at the centre of the work is really, really important to drive any change.

Caireen Goddard leads Big Changeʼs global insight network and their system change strategy in the UK, which is centred on Subject to Change, a new national project that will empower young people and the public to set a new direction for learning. For over 20 years Caireen has worked on learning, strategy, networks and innovation projects with schools, local authorities, charities, various national and global bodies, and central government.

Caitlin Ross leads on the identification, funding and support of pioneering project partners. She also leads on Big Changeʼs impact strategy, making sure that they gather the insights needed to keep growing and learning, both as a charity and as a funder. Caitlin has a frontline background in microfinance and in youth work, working on the ground with organisations in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. She brings her experience delivering scalable, impact-focused interventions to Big Changeʼs grant giving and impact work to support pioneers who are helping young people to thrive in life.

Professional Prompt Questions

What would you want life to look like in 20 yearsʼ time for the children you teach and how well are current schooling practices preparing them?

What would you choose to assess if you set up an education system that prepared children to be good citizens?

Who do you view as educators of children and young people?

How do you raise all the ships around you when you are gaining knowledge and trialling new educational approaches?

Who do you look to for ideas?