Cann Bridge School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 26 November 2024

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 any 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 the school should improve

• 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.

Read the full Ofsted report (opens in a new tab)