The New River College Primary PRU provides education and training for young people aged 5 -11 who are not able to access a school place. It implements a flexible, creative and preventative range of education programmes with the objective that the students will be able to re-enter mainstream education.
The existing PRU is located at Dowrey Street and affiliated with other New River College facilities throughout Islington. The existing facilities do not fully meet the needs of the users and are not fit for purpose. The new facilities have been designed to accommodate 18 existing primary places, specifically for these pupils with highly challenging behaviour.
The Bridge Integrated Learning Space (ILS) will be a school for children and young people aged 7-19 who have significant learning difficulties, extreme sensory issues, and exhibit challenging behaviour. The school will have 25 secondary places, eight of which will be provided with residential accommodation on site.
The affiliated Bridge School has two sites in Islington for primary and secondary students. These pupils require a very specific educational experience in order to learn effectively. Every aspect of the school needs to be specially tailored to respond to the physical and sensory requirements of the pupils, as well as addressing the extremely large Staff / Student ratio. The Bridge ILS will provide learning spaces for small class groups of 5.
A key aspect of The Bridge ILS will be the provision of a residential facility, which will meet a very real need for certain pupils. This facility is currently not available at either of the related operational Bridge schools.
The project has been driven by providing highly specialised facilities for both schools whilst allowing them to operate entirely separately, all within very challenging site restrictions.
