Brindishe Green is a place where the extraordinary happens every day!

The most recent independent review of teaching and learning at Brindishe Green confirms once again that it is an outstanding school. The review was carried out over 2 days by a team of 4 - three senior leaders from other schools led by an Ofsted lead inspector Tony Byrne. They observed teaching in every class across the school and made judgements against Ofsted criteria. According to Ofsted lessons- and schools are judged to be 1 (outstanding), 2 (good), 3 (requires improvement) or 4 (inadequate). Across the board, teaching and learning at Brindishe Green was judged to be outstanding.

The report, written by and for Challenge Partners (www.challengepartners.org) makes great reading and concludes that the school well deserves its current status as an Ofsted rated outstanding school. Click here to view Ofsted report.

You might enjoy reading some of its key paragraphs...

"Brindishe Green is a place where the extraordinary happens every day. Classroom displays fizz with children’s ideas, opinions and work in progress. The variety of beautiful objects, on shelves and in alcoves, at once remind children of their home culture and their diversity. Stencilled on walls and doorways are lines from pupils’ poems celebrating and stimulating their thinking and their imagination. All this supports outstanding progress in lessons and over time. A typical example of rapid progress was seen in a lesson where pupils were fascinated by mixing coloured liquids to make a magic vegetable fertiliser (they are studying plants as a curriculum theme). They peered at measuring jugs, discussed the need to vary proportions, noted how much it took of one colour to change another......and all the time, guided by instructions, acquired and applied knowledge about fractions.

Pupils make very rapid progress from very low starting points. Attainment matches national expectations by the end of Key Stage 1 and by the end of Key Stage 2 results in English and mathematics are significantly above the national average at levels 4 and 5. Results for 2012 show further improvement on 2011. A gap revealed in phonics testing is being addressed systematically and by developing phonic knowledge at every opportunity.

Outstanding progress arises from the quality of the taught curriculum, assessment and the ethos of the school. Assessment is integrated into lessons; pupils know the learning intention, success criteria and their next steps. Children become very independent and learning is personalised to secure maximum progress. Individuals and groups are tracked at regular intervals. Interventions to support or challenges to accelerate are implemented. Accurate moderation is enhanced by comparing across the Brindishe federation".

"Typically, teaching observed within the review was good or outstanding. Progress data indicates that teaching is consistently outstanding. Teachers’ strong subject knowledge gives a sharp focus to their interpretation of the curriculum that creates clear learning intentions that the pupils fully understand. Teachers point out strong cross-curricular references to enable pupils to link learning from one activity to another. Children are inspired by their teachers because the purpose of what they are learning is clear, exciting and relevant to their own experiences: pupils are on ‘the edge of their seats’ as they anticipate what’s coming next" Talking about what happens at Brindishe Green, two Year 4 girls put it better than the review team could: “Teachers relate to our lives,” and, “do fun things that make us smarter".