The Observatory School, Wirral, is a community secondary that caters for 72 pupils who have social, emotional and mental health needs, and autistic spectrum conditions, more than 80 per cent of whom have pupil premium funding.

It lies in the small village of Bidston, near Liverpool, where there is little cultural diversity and 95 per cent of pupils are white British, yet staff have “opened up the world to pupils” by giving them opportunities to work with young people from different countries.

The school has completed projects through the eTwinning network with more than 21 countries. It successfully applied for Erasmus funding with its partner school in France to take 24 pupils to meet their overseas peers on four face-to-face visits.

The judges were particularly impressed with an exchange trip to Finland for five pupils with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum conditions. There was some concern about how pupils would cope being in the large Finnish school alongside children from another culture and, at first, they were shy and anxious about the experience. But as the visit progressed, they slowly integrated into the larger groups and, by the end of the experience, they had made friends for life with the other children.

“The Observatory School is a shining example of how education can open up and widen pupils’ perceptions of the world,” the judges commented. “By the school’s own admission, they are bound only by their imagination.”

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