A Fulham primary school, with an additionally resourced provision for pupils with severe learning difficulties, wanted to run an evidence-based early reading programme aimed at pupils in Years 5 and 6 who have not secured early reading skills, including phonics.

The Foundation will fund training for a teaching assistant and designated resources purchased specifically for the programme. Designed to be taught outside of the English curriculum as a special intervention, the Fresh Start resources will be ring-fenced for use by the intervention teacher aimed at specific individuals and groups for one hour per day, four days per week.

Twenty-four vulnerable students attending schools in the Fulham area are being supported by individual grants from the Foundation that will assist with aspects of their personal and educational development.

Covering items such as the purchase of school uniforms and shoes, essential equipment for use in class, help with the the cost of travel to school and access to additional meals, the grants will help students to improve their school attendance, participate more fully in class activity, to better access the curriculum and improve engagement with their peers. Increased levels of confidence and a sense of personal achievement will assist them to reach their full potential as young adults through their school experience.

Staff at the schools involved will be managing the individual grants and review students’ progress on a termly basis to enable continuing financial assistance to be directed where it is needed.

Fulham Cross Girls’ School is a fully inclusive school which welcomes students of all abilities and proactively supports students with a variety of additional needs. Currently there are 36 SEND (special education need and disability) students in the Years 10 and 11 critical exam years and a further 7 students with an Educational, Health and Care Plan.

The Foundation will be supporting the school’s specialist team with IT equipment and a library for students with dyslexic and other special needs.

The school’s SEND team consists of several specialists. Two highly experienced teachers in the areas of Special Education Needs and Psychology have worked in the profession for 25 years between them and are qualified in areas such as Cognition, Learning Needs, Communication, Interaction Needs, and literacy and numeracy. Four further teaching assistants specialise in helping students with complex needs in Years 10 and 11, their transition to 6th form and dyslexia and literacy. In addition to this they have specialist skills in Mental Health Needs, Science Specialist support and English as an additional language.

The Special Educational Needs Department at FCGS is extremely successful – students make progress well beyond expectations and compared to similar students nationally.

The technology support will provide thirteen durable units designed to support the special requirements of students to facilitate the learning and skills required to prepare for GCSEs. The programme will promote independence and confidence that will ultimately allow students to show what they are capable of and help them to reach their full potential in their exams.

The grant will also be used to assist the school to build up a library of books for students who are dyslexic or have another learning need by providing age-appropriate books aimed at students who may have a low reading age but require books with appropriate content. The aim is to resource the library with ‘class packs’ – sets of the same books which can be read together as a class, enabling teacher-led discussions as would happen in any other English lesson. The class pack books cover a range of titles and a range of reading ages. Simplified versions of set texts for example dyslexia-friendly versions will also be possible.

The library will deliver measurable impact in these areas:

• allow access to age-appropriate books
• encourage reluctant readers to read – crucial to their progress all across the curriculum
• allow SEN teachers to plan whole class activities using the same full length book (as opposed to extracts)
• support mainstream English teaching with a better understanding of set texts
• allow students to have appropriate reading material with them at all times (all FCGS students have to have a reading book in their bag for quiet reading sessions) to enable participation in independent reading
• improve levels of confidence

Discussion with SEND teachers, book reviews and work specifically related to set texts results in increased knowledge and understanding of the book in terms of subject matter and linguistic analysis, and reading ages improve at a faster level than before.

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/

The Trustees have approved grant applications to three local Fulham schools. These are the first grants made in memory of Charlotte Sulivan since we were re-established as a registered charity at the end of 2020 after a gap of 16 years.

We will be posting more details about this milestone as soon as we are able to.

After two years of working towards this goal, the Elizabethan Schools Foundation has been re-registered by the Charities Commission and is now able to make grants in accordance with our charitable objectives to the lasting memory of our founder Charlotte Sulivan.