OPAL Gold Award
We are delighted to share with you that we have been awarded OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) Gold status!
It is great to see that our play provision has been externally recognised in this way. It is a tremendous achievement and is reward for a lot of hard work and dedication.
Upon awarding Bridgewater with Gold status Ingrid Wilkinson, Senior OPAL Mentor and Director, said “It has been wonderful working with Bridgewater Primary School over the past couple of years to see the transformation that has taken place in the school’s approach to the provision of quality play.
Despite the difficulties of the COVID period the school has managed to implement many of the cultural and practical changes recommended in the OPAL programme and the results are clear to see, Bridgewater Primary is now truly an award level OPAL school. This means that every child has an amazing playtime every day. It also means that play is taken seriously at the school and is given appropriate leadership, planning, evaluation and resources. OPAL Gold status puts your school in the top 0.05 percentile of UK primary schools in terms of the quality of your play offer. Playtimes at Bridgewater are inclusive, joyful and provide a wonderful variety of types of play.”
We are determined to build on this success and continue to give our play provision the importance it deserves. This includes investing in staff training, developing the playwork skills of staff and allocating appropriate resources (time and money).
To find out more about OPAL, please visit outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk
