Bridge Learning Campus: embedding all-through education across a learning campus

Summary

Bridge Learning Campus is using a hard federation structure and executive leadership to drive forward its vision of all-through education.

Key learning/outcomes

Bridge Learning Campus is pursuing a commitment to all-through education through a radical stage-not-age learning curriculum.
As well as individual school improvement plans, Bridge Learning Campus has an all-through improvement plan based upon a clear vision.
The schools share senior leadership functions and have achieved economies of scale through cross-phase and cross-school staffing.
Performance and ethos-related goals are shared across the campus.
The secondary school has seen improvements in pupil behaviour and engagement.

Background

Bridge Learning Campus in south Bristol is a new all-through education trust, formed from a hard federation of a primary and a secondary school, a student support centre for disaffected secondary students and a 14-19 centre. All of the phases are based on a single purpose-built campus. A special school joined the other schools as a soft federation partner in September 2009.

The federation is led by an executive team, with a chief executive working alongside three headteachers and an operations director. The chief executive has overarching responsibility for the campus and for driving the all-through agenda. The trust members are the University of the West of England, City of Bristol College and Bristol City Council.

Key challenges and issues

Delivering all-through education

The schools needed to develop an understanding of all-through education and develop structures that would support the all-through vision.

Solution or approach

Building a leadership team

Working with a chief executive enables the headteachers to focus on leading learning. The leadership structure also means that the chief executive and director of operations have been able to offload some of their previous responsibilities.

Embedding the all-through agenda

The chief executive is able to drive the all-through agenda and support the individual headteachers in delivering the approach. Key individuals within the leadership team have all-through roles that facilitate the embedding of the all-through agenda.

Further information

For further information contact Bridge Learning Campus.