Create spaces for success

With OFSTED increasingly focused on the delivery of holistic education that impacts every element of a child’s development, the creation of imaginative outdoor spaces has an important role to play in securing a strong report…

When budgets are tight, finding the funds to enhance your outdoor school facilities might feel like a low priority, but the rewards that your students and teaching community reap from these are huge and increasingly OFSTED is recognising the impact of carefully considered outdoor facilities.

So how do school canopies and strong OFSTED ratings align? Read on to discover three ways that investing in your outdoor areas can help you secure valuable wins at your next inspection:

• Encouraging positive behaviour across your site: OFSTED reports put a huge value on the behaviour of students that they see evidenced throughout the school environment, including in non-classroom settings.
  • Creating covered walkways is a simple way of enhancing behaviour around your school, by facilitating a steady, organised flow of students around a large site. Covered walkways also demonstrate a commitment to staff wellbeing and to creating environments that are pleasant and easy to work in.
  • Providing inviting all-weather outdoor spaces to socialise and dine in – like the covered dining area we created at Arthur Mellows Village College, Peterborough – is another great way of creating social areas in which student behaviour can be easily monitored and patrolled. Most importantly, these inviting areas often become much-loved social hubs of schools once installed.
• Creating imaginative learning opportunities: When it assesses ‘quality of education’ OFSTED evaluates how effectively and innovatively the curriculum is delivered. The creation of all-weather outdoor learning spaces like those we recently built at Bosbury Primary School demonstrates your school’s commitment to delivering imaginative, hands-on learning experiences for your students – not just during the limited summer months, but year-round!
• Supporting wellbeing and wider development: In recent years, there’s been an increasing focus across education on supporting the development of vital soft skills such as teamwork, resilience and leadership, and team sports provide these opportunities in spades. By making your outdoor sports facilities year-round with a covered MUGA, you can demonstrate your commitment to providing growth opportunities that extend well beyond the classroom.

You can also consider hiring out these popular facilities to local sports clubs and community organisations – a great way of highlighting your school’s strong connections with the wider community – something else OFSTED looks for in their reporting. Discover the benefits St Hugh’s School in North Lincolnshire and Essex Primary School in Newham have realised since having their covered MUGAs installed by Fordingbridge.

If you’d like to enhance your site in 2025, why not get in touch and arrange a free site visit? Sometimes all it takes is a fresh, expert eye to see potential you might never have imagined before…

Return