Bow School

Bow is a rapidly expanding mixed 11 – 18 school in Tower Hamlets. It is an aspirational learning community determined to provide a rich and broad educational experience for all. We are excited about our journey and enjoy opportunities to share our learning with others. We love to learn from all those who work alongside us providing our young people with enriching experiences to prepare them for their next steps in life.

Now fully settled into our fabulous new building, we are driving forwards on a strong foundation – both in terms of the building and our rising student outcomes. As we grow, we have had considerable interest in us from parents, local businesses and the wider education community. Our priority is always to provide the very best educational opportunities to all of our students and the team at Bow is very good at doing this. We have a continued focus on accelerating progress, raising attainment and ensuring that our students are able to access top quality destinations.

We are totally committed to helping our students to become the best possible learners equipped with the skills they need to be well informed and independent learners. Central to our approach is our work to ensure that the Bow Learner knows how well they are doing and, crucially, that they understand what they need to do next to make further improvements. We develop our students independent learning skills through an emphasis on tasks to undertake at home as well as through an extensive programme of BowExtra! learning opportunities outside of the timetabled school day. Academic literacy is a priority development area in all year groups ensuring that all students build the essential skills of great communication.

We are determined to ensure that our teachers develop and deepen their skills. We have a core programme of CPD focused on maintaining our standard that all teaching at the school is at least good and much of it is outstanding. We ensure that our teachers are well equipped to meet the demands of the changing curriculum, whilst ensuring that the curriculum we deliver remains broad and balanced and prepares students for adult life in the 21st Century.

Our CPD programme also ensures that leadership of the school at every level is constantly improving. We develop our leaders such that they are fully equipped to deliver exciting learning programmes whilst holding each other and their teams to account for the benefit of all students. Leadership development is central to the ongoing school transformation work and we provide personalised programmes for our leaders. All staff participate in a rigorous and developmental appraisal programme. Our student leadership programme is an important element of the broad curriculum in the school. We seek ways to develop leadership skills for our students and celebrate those that put themselves forward to provide a strong student voice and great role models for the school community.

Fundamental to everything that the school does is the way in which we do it. The “Bow Way” was introduced in June 2015 and informs the way that all members of the school community work. It provides the language and the framework for all of our conversations and communications and emphasises the school’s ethos of respect, teamwork, diversity, success, rising to challenges and learning from every situation. All of the members of our community play important roles in the success of our students. To this end, we continue, to improve our ongoing and pro-active communications with parents, and seek new ways in which our parents can become more involved in the school, better informed about curriculum and assessment and more able to work alongside us as we educate their children.

We are also supported by, and work with, a wide range of local and global businesses, and we partner closely with our feeder primary schools and with other secondary schools both local and further afield. In 2017-18 we are further developing these important links and looking for more opportunities for our young people to meet others, to work alongside people from different backgrounds and to generally broaden horizons. Our partners support the curriculum, provide mentoring, develop employability skills, etc. They also encourage the ambition of our students through university bursaries and the provision of resources to inspire and challenge the students. Our work with other schools strengthens the partnerships that we have in the community.

As a highly aspirational school, we deliver excellence. We recruit high quality staff to deliver the very best learning opportunities to our students who are increasingly independent and resilient learners.Bow is a place of endless possibility and boundless ambition. These aspirations are grounded in a deep understanding of the work, dedication, commitment, resilience and questioning growth mind-set that is needed to raise them. Bow students expect to go far and fast.

The broad and exciting curriculum at Bow provides an outstanding platform for performance, creativity and enquiry enabling talent to be discovered and developed. Great partnerships underpin the success of the Bow community. We continuously seek and nurture opportunities to harness the energy, skills and experiences of others to secure outstanding learning experiences for our students.