How can schools address the long-term impacts of Covid-19 this academic year?

As kids go back to school this week, schools are considering how to repair the damage of the last 18 months.

Non-mainstream schools being used as holding ground for Bristol children with special needs, review finds

A review of alternative learning provision was commissioned after failings in Bristol’s SEND services were criticised by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.

‘My family caught Covid in an outbreak at our son’s school. We’re not out of the woods yet.’

There has been a significant number of Covid outbreaks at Bristol schools amid concerns about the Delta variant.

Bristol to create 66 new special school places

The new places will go some way towards addressing Bristol’s chronic shortage of special school places, but it’s still unclear when the places will be available.

Bristol parents say employers are wrongly classing them as keyworkers to get their kids into school

Physical attendance in schools is higher this lockdown, and parents say it's partly because they're being pressured by employers to send their children in.

Much-needed secondary school won’t open until 2024 at earliest, parents told

Oasis Temple Quarter School was supposed to open in 2018, but further planning delays mean more children in east Bristol will have to be squeezed into existing schools for years to come.

Schools launch community fundraisers to tackle digital poverty

Secondary schools are crowdfunding to buy internet dongles and asking for donations of IT equipment to ensure all students can access online learning during lockdown

New Bristol care home for disabled children to open after St Christopher’s closure

The privately-run home closed down in 2019. Now the council wants to fill the gap with in-house services instead of forking out for expensive placements outside Bristol.

Watch: Vulnerability, escapism and creativity, my experiences of lockdown as a young Bristolian

Lockdown left young people in the city feeling stranded, dislocated from their usual connections. Here, a young aspiring writer reflects on school, writing and the new sense of self-confidence that grew over those months

‘You need to see yourself’: tackling the national curriculum’s overwhelming whiteness

“Put yourself into their shoes for a moment.” Aisha Thomas, the assistant principal at City Academy in Easton, is explaining how the national curriculum is...

Inside Bristol schools during a new academic year like no other

Struggling to access Covid-19 testing, helping disadvantaged kids catch up, and anxieties about another lockdown: Bristol school leaders speak of the challenges of reopening to a new normal.

Barriers in education: ‘Bridging the digital divide more pressing now than ever’

Lockdown left many pupils without laptops, it meant missing out on vital learning, school work piling up and stress increasing. As schools tentatively reopen, bridging the digital divide will be a key challenge.