Monday 22nd January 2024 

Bradworthy Academy and Ofsted 

Bradworthy Academy, its staff and Trustees, embrace every opportunity to improve the quality of teaching, education and all the add-value opportunities we give to our children at Bradworthy. We have consistently had good outcomes in SATs, extremely high parent satisfaction, and an ethos which aims to give wide experiences of sports and many other activities to encourage curiosity, questioning and a spirit of adventure among Bradworthy children.

Over the past twenty years we have produced Key Stage Two SATs results which have repeatedly been above national averages. Our Key Stage One Phonics data is also consistently in line with or above national averages. Alongside these academic successes our pupils are engaged in a wide range of experiences and opportunities throughout their time in school. This includes annual residential trips for all pupils in Years 3 – 6, visiting a range of destinations to ensure a variety of experiences, an ambitious and challenging outdoor pursuits curriculum and regular participation in sporting activities and competitions at local, regional and national levels. Our school also places a high emphasis on creative arts, with regular musical performances, unique and crowd pleasing plays and an annual art exhibition to showcase the talents of our pupils.

Our recent Ofsted inspection which is published today reduces our rich and broad curriculum to two words ‘Requires Improvement’ and we want to reassure parents that we take every challenge seriously and will use this as an opportunity to make improvements to all aspects of school life. We must raise some concerns about the Inspections process.

· We are currently in a complaints process about the way that the inspection was conducted which was hostile, overly negative and inspectors were clearly blithely unaware of the trauma this was causing to members of the school community including children, staff and trustees who all experienced distress.

· Ofsted Inspections will only be resumed nationally next week (22 January) having been suspended to allow staff to receive training on the mental health challenges following the suicide of headteacher, Ruth Perry, after an improperly conducted inspection. Yet Ofsted have found against our complaints at the way the Bradworthy Inspection was conducted despite receiving testimony from staff, parents and governors. Unsuprisingly Ofsted favoured the statements of its own staff over the evidence of our staff, parents and governors. The time for Ofsted to mark its own homework must stop.

· As professionals we always regard our teaching and delivery as ‘requiring improvement’ and will use this Ofsted judgement as an opportunity to improve all we do. Nevertheless, we take specific issue with some of the judgements. In particular we have an effective way of teaching phonics and our outcomes have been consistent and produced results well above national average. We deliver the national curriculum effectively. And our trustees and governors have a long record of delivery and challenge and have recently led a £700,000 programme of building to provide new classrooms paid for by Bradworthy Academy with no outside support.

· During the inspection an Ofsted staff member used the phrase ‘outcomes are not important’ but we believe that outcomes speak for themselves. For example, at the end of Key Stage Two the number of children both passing the reading test and who are at greater depth was significantly above national averages as it has always been. It has also been unaffected by the impact of Covid-19 which is a significant achievement of which we are justifiably proud.

We want to reassure all parents who have just seen the Ofsted report that we take this very seriously and are always looking to improve our teaching. If you have any questions about any aspects of the report please make contact with us via our website, or come and see us.

Please find below our most recent Ofsted reports and relevant information from the Department for Education Performance Tables.