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.
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