Bradstow School

The adoption of Gentle Teaching approaches throughout the school community has transformed the culture and ethos of the school and has enabled significant changes to occur through the development of our shared vision, mission, values and organisational behaviours. We are proud of this achievement and perceive this as outstanding and this is...

The adoption of Gentle Teaching approaches throughout the school community has transformed the culture and ethos of the school and has enabled significant changes to occur through the development of our shared vision, mission, values and organisational behaviours. We are proud of this achievement and perceive this as outstanding and this is recognised consistently by our regulatory bodies

The four pillars of Gentle Teaching (safe, loved, loving, engaged) are taught through repeated acts of love, shared activities and moments to build healthy interpersonal relationships of reciprocity and fairness.

This approach helps create a dialogue where the individual feels listened to and is more willing to communicate in ways that are less “hurtful, disruptive, controlling and obsessive”. Gentle Teaching creates the pathways to develop these safe and caring relationships through providing leadership, invitation and example rather than trying to impose control. Within this context, challenging moments are met with warmth and understanding and are better anticipated, prevented and refocused.

At Bradstow, we’re committed to creating a Culture of Gentleness, an inclusive environment built upon the principles of Gentle Teaching, a unique relational approach centred on building safe, loving and engaging relationships in both its values and methods.

The impact of these changes over the last nine years has been...

At Bradstow, we’re committed to creating a Culture of Gentleness, an inclusive environment built upon the principles of Gentle Teaching, a unique relational approach centred on building safe, loving and engaging relationships in both its values and methods.

The impact of these changes over the last nine years has been transformational for our young people as our people have adopted approaches and organisational behaviours based on reflective practice and teaching strategy analysis, and the principles of Gentle Teaching in building relationship as a vehicle for teaching skills and to improve their creativity. Bench marking and sharing practice across the International and European Gentle Teaching has also resulted in initiatives at Bradstow to support these approaches.
Our role at Bradstow is to listen deeply and provide just the right support to assist the development of caring relationships and meaningful lives for our children and young people. Creating a Culture of Gentleness requires everyone at Bradstow to be a learner.

It became clear to the leadership of the school that a more creative and flexible approach was required to both sustain the school into the future (based on clear trends in national social care policy and requests from Local Authorities) and to effectively plan the education and care of individual young people who may require extended...

It became clear to the leadership of the school that a more creative and flexible approach was required to both sustain the school into the future (based on clear trends in national social care policy and requests from Local Authorities) and to effectively plan the education and care of individual young people who may require extended residential care, short term breaks and day provision. To enable this approach to be developed the school needed to become registered as a children’s home legally to allow young people to remain at the school for longer periods where required. This registration enabled our Extended Provision to be fully implemented which has been defined by external agencies to be outstanding, and is a key strength of our organisation today.