Cann Bridge School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Cann Bridge School caters for pupils aged three to 18 with severe learning difficulties and profound and multiple learning difficulties. It includes a sixth form provision called 'Post Bridge College'. The school is improving rapidly.

Pupils are benefiting from greater structure and ambition in their learning. Expectations of what pupils can achieve are rising. However, there is more to do before the curriculum supports every pupil to maximise their potential.

Pupils enjoy supportive relationships with staff. This helps them to feel safe and happy when they come to school. When pupils struggle, or their behaviour changes, staff come together to help them to overcome a...ny challenges.

Pupils are accepting of and kind to one another. They develop the confidence to try new things thanks to the patience and understanding they are shown.

The school offers a wide range of opportunities to prepare pupils for their adult lives.

Pupils learn resilience by joining in with physical challenges, such as the local half marathon. Students in the sixth form try out real-life jobs when serving parents, carers and staff in the school-based café. Pupils develop a taste for success, for example, a team of secondary-aged pupils recently won a national enterprise award.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

All pupils have education, health and care (EHC) plans that include the long-term aim of helping pupils to develop their communication skills. The school introduces pupils to a range of communication systems, including Makaton, alternative communication devices, and Braille. Many pupils become proficient in their preferred approach, or combination of approaches.

This supports them to express themselves and show their learning in increasingly complex ways.

The school has strengthened the reading curriculum. Across the school, pupils enjoy books together in class.

Many pupils, including students in the sixth form, follow a phonics curriculum. Increasingly, pupils read fluently and show understanding of stories and characters. The oldest students focus on the vocabulary that will be the most useful to them in their adult lives.

Although staff check how pupils' reading and writing skills are developing, they do not use what they learn to help pupils to build on their learning effectively. This reduces what pupils can achieve over time. Some pupils do not receive the support they need to extend their writing more.

The approach to checking what pupils can do in the earliest stages of learning to read is still being developed.

In several subjects, pupils learn a more ambitious curriculum than they did in the past. These recent improvements need more time to embed before pupils get the full benefit.

Staff do not give pupils sufficient opportunity to apply and practise new learning. The support provided sometimes stops pupils from showing what they can do independently.

There is a calm atmosphere in the school.

The school has developed new systems for recording behaviour incidents. As a result, the patterns in pupils' behaviour are better understood. Leaders and staff work together to support pupils through periods when their behaviour is more heightened.

This is supportive for staff and pupils alike. Pupils attend well. Increasingly, they benefit from more settled staffing arrangements.

In personal, social and health education (PSHE), pupils follow a curriculum which is carefully adapted to meet their needs. They are supported to understand the different types of relationships that they will experience in their lives. Pupils receive support from a range of health professionals, such as school nurses, occupational, and speech and language therapists.

This helps to promote their well-being.

The school carefully considers how to nurture the development of each pupil. For example, every week at 'Personal Development Club', pupils enjoy enrichment activities designed to meet their individual needs.

This includes support with emotions, sports and games, and opportunities to sing and sign, or to learn to play an instrument.

Pupils, including students in the sixth form, access valuable careers advice and support with their next steps. They are taught how to use local transport services so that they can take up a place at a local college where appropriate.

The school is imaginative and ambitious for what pupils can achieve in the community and beyond. For example, students are preparing for a trip to Gran Canaria where they will put into practice the skills they have gained through work experience at a local farm.

Since the last inspection, leaders have prioritised well and overseen a period of rapid improvement.

A knowledgeable and experienced governing body provides strong challenge and support to the school. A new programme of training is leading to growing expertise and confidence among staff. Leaders and governors share an accurate understanding of the work that remains.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Recent improvements to the school's curriculum are at an early stage of implementation. Teaching does not help pupils to embed and demonstrate new learning effectively.

Some of the work given to pupils does not support them to build on their existing knowledge and skills. The school should give pupils every opportunity to show what they know and can do, so that the learning can be better matched to their different starting points. The school is not sharply focused on providing what different pupils need as their reading and writing develops.

The approach to assessment in the earliest stages of reading is not well established. Pupils who are developing as writers do not achieve as well as they could because there is not a determined approach to working through individual difficulties. The school should ensure that pupils' next steps in reading and writing are clearly understood.

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