In 2017 Gesher Primary School opened its doors, becoming the first dedicated Jewish primary school for pupils with mild to moderate special educational needs (SEN). Within four years the school was rated outstanding in all areas by Ofsted and at capacity, proving both the need and demand for this type of provision.
For a parent of child with SEN, deciding on which school to send their child to can be a very difficult and often complicated decision. Many will ask themselves whether their child can cope with a mainstream school; will the school be able to meet the needs of their child; will their child reach their potential; will their child be included, make friends and ultimately will their child be happy and thrive academically.
The majority of pupils who arrive at Gesher come from mainstream schools that, for a variety of reasons, did not work out. This is symptomatic of a system that does not provide sufficient resources or suitable training for mainstream staff.
At a primary level, many children with SEN can, for want of a better expression, “muddle through”. A caring teacher, smaller classes and simple expectations of a child learning to read, write and acquire friends enable many SEN pupils to pass through the primary sector unaided.
Yes, many will have challenges and problems and may languish at the bottom of “academic” levels but so long as a child is relatively happy and undisruptive, this is considered as working.
But what happens when these children transition to secondary? When the expectations dramatically change. When children become young adults, go through puberty and are expected to consistently take and pass exams; when they are forced to take subjects that they cannot contend with; when they have to navigate movement around vast, multiform-entry schools; when there is no one caring teacher who “has their back”; when they are expected to find the social skills to navigate different cliques and groups.
As one SEN young adult put it so eloquently to us: “Primary school can be a challenge but secondary school is brutal”. So what happens to those children then?
The answer is reflected in the statistics that blight our country. High- functioning young adults with special educational needs or disabilities cost the state over £30 billion a year in benefits, welfare and interventions. Over 75 per cent are unemployed, living with ageing parents.
These young aduts are among the most vulnerable in our society, twenty times more likely to become depressed and suicidal as their mainstream counterparts.
They are also more likely to be groomed for criminality and abuse. And the education system which fails so many of these young people, causing them to leave school without qualifications and unprepared for life as an adult, has to be held to account for this.
At Gesher , we believe that these young people need to be given a chance. That they have the ability to succeed but that their pathway to independence and success needs to look different to that of their mainstream counterparts.
It’s a simple premise at its core: they see and understand the world and learn differently , so they need to be taught differently in a different type of schooling environment.
This month Gesher will welcome its first cohort of secondary school pupils. When it became clear that this provision was needed to sit alongside the primary school, we spent 18 months researching what this might look like. We worked with our community’s largest secondary schools, we brought in external advisers and educationalists to seek their advice and we visited countless schools already in existence to learn good practice.
The new all-through (secondary) school will have small class sizes and deliver a forward-thinking curriculum that has therapy woven into it. Teachers and therapy teams will work together to ensure young people have specific targets they are working towards and that outcomes are split into academic subjects and qualifications, work and internships, and world-related learning, including social and emotional wellbeing and life skills.
Community and relationships play a strong part in the school’s culture. We want our children to support each other and form lifelong meaningful friendships.
We were astounded at the success of our crowdfunding appeal this summer and so very grateful to all those who chose to support it. It enabled us to begin building work on what will be our new long-term home: a wonderful three-acre site in Pinner, formerly the home of Moriah primary school.
The Harrow Jewish Day Trust have given us the opportunity to reuse an existing community asset and to develop and change it ,to make it into a state-of-the-art, multifunctional, community space equipped to educate our pupils from primary through to secondary. The work will be done in a number of phases as the pupil numbers grow.
Gesher looks forward to welcoming its first secondary pupils this month, to the school’s future growth and expansion and to becoming a necessary and included part of the fabric of the Jewish community’s educational infrastructure.
Sarah Sultman is a co-founder of Gesher
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