Many of the learners attending the Bridge AP Academy have been unable to experience success within a mainstream educational model. Learners often arrive in crisis and require a trauma informed approach to engage in the curriculum. Often significant barriers are faced, such as SEND needs (special educational needs and disability) and poor behaviour towards learning, which is where the school’s approach to personal development in education, focusing on engaging all learners, aims to provide students with lifelong skills.

The Bridge AP Academy seeks to provide all learners with a range of social, emotional and mental health needs with the chance to succeed despite barriers that they may have faced previously. Underpinned by the values of the TBAP Trust – resilience, compassion and innovation – these values are supported by the TBAP principles of Success by Any Means, Precise Inclusion and Starting at Great. With these values and principles in mind, learners are able to achieve qualifications that will support their life chances and development as individuals with characteristics that will allow them to be successful in all areas of their life in society.

The Foundation is funding training and resources to support six teachers and six teaching assistants to deliver three literacy projects that will give students the best opportunity to learn to read and write quickly. Bridge Academy students have a reading age that is lower than their chronological age and if not supported to read and write at home it is the school’s responsibility to provide support to ensure that they are not disadvantaged.

The initial project will run to the end of the current academic year with measurable objectives in place that will enable a repeatable model to be used with small groups of students over 6-week periods in the future. A successful outcome will enable the Bridge Academy team to use these resources to create a repeatable model that can be run every term and reach all students who attend the school.

Some benefits include:

• providing access to age-appropriate books
• encouraging reluctant readers to read (crucial to progress across the curriculum)
• allowing teachers to plan whole class activities
• supporting learners returning to the mainstream school setting
• allowing students access to independent reading
• improving confidence
• helping to prevent NEET (not in education, employment or training) post age 16
• improving GCSE outcomes for all learners

For those interested in further reading, the book by Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield, titled ‘What works for children and young people with literacy difficulties? The effectiveness of intervention schemes’ is downloadable for free and endorses key elements of this project.

Fulham Cross Academy is a truly diverse secondary school serving the needs of Fulham’s local community. There are no entry criteria for the school such as permitted/acceptable academic levels or other recognised requirements and the school’s staff and governors are passionate about working with the families that have chosen the school to provide a first-rate education for their young people offering them life chances to build a better future beyond the curriculum.

The school wishes to address barriers to learning by using a grant from the Foundation to cultivate an outdoor area, with landscaped green spaces for the students to use to further develop their understanding of plant life and provide much needed opportunities to broaden their educational landscape beyond a limited exposure to such areas. This is needed now more than ever due to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on both the social and the emotional health of young people, especially as many of the students live in limited accommodation with little or no access to a garden or adequate green spaces within their local community.

A purpose-built, designated area will provide opportunities to develop:

• mental health and well-being
• climate change agenda
• outdoor education opportunities
• science-based learning
• STEM learning opportunities
• environmental geography stimulus
• greenhouse section for growing plants
• pond life and associated projects
• business studies (eg: selling grown food(s))
• social sciences and cooking
• a weather station
• quiet reading and literacy development
• art and still life space and music recitals
• quiet area at break times

Learners, at all ages, learn best when they are focussed and stimulated by both their teacher and the environment, and classroom-based education is not the only vehicle that schools can use to maximise learning.

The school is familiar with the link between the socio-economic disadvantage that affects their intake and the impact on mental health and wellbeing. Incidences of mental health crises are on the rise in the student population and an additional type of therapy to complement the existing more traditional therapy services would be of benefit. Many students live in flats with no outside space and therefore a garden or smallholding embedded in the life of the school’s community would have a significant impact on their lives. The smallholding/garden will be included into the curriculum both in terms of the core curriculum, through links to Science and Geography, as well as the foundation curriculum, for example cooking with produce in technology and sketching still life and nature in Art. The space can also be used to benefit the whole child by holding music recitals and mindfulness sessions.

The school’s vision is for vulnerable students and groups to be given responsibility within the garden, with duties and protected time to boost self-esteem and self-belief. The aim is for the garden/smallholding to become a valued and central part of school life to really provide an opportunity for students to access the benefits and have a significant impact on their wellbeing. 

Alongside a grant from the Foundation, which will enable the purchase of a greenhouse, planters, a pond, plants, compost and seeds, the local community will also be contributing with donations of time and labour, building materials and financial donations from among others the Morgan Sindell team, the school staff and 6^th form students.

We will be checking back on progress over the coming months!

For those interested, there is a plethora of current research that indicates the link between gardening and the natural world and mental health. So-called ‘green psychology’ is growing in importance with many health professionals now advocating it to address mental health difficulties and maintain general wellbeing. The articles below provide further reading:  

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/13/green-therapy-gardening-helping-fight-depression
• https://www.rhs.org.uk/get-involved/community-gardening/news/articles/growing-a-garden-for-wellbeing
• https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/nature-and-mental-health/useful-contacts/