Nearly seven thousand children across Bedfordshire are gearing up to start at a new secondary school in the new academic year - as it races towards us.
The summer holidays are currently in full swing, but come early September, schoolchildren across England will be beckoned back to the classroom. Among them will be thousands of recent primary school leavers, who will hopefully find an uplifting community at their new school to guide them through a whole new world of exams and qualifications.
But working out whether the secondary school they’ll be heading off to this autumn is going to be the right fit for them, and your family, is no easy matter. To help parents get some idea of what their local schools might be like as a learning environment, we’re revisiting the best performing state-funded secondary schools across Bedfordshire.
We’ve created a league table of the top-performing schools across the Bedford, Luton, and Central Bedfordshire council areas. This is primarily based on each school’s Progress 8 score, using the most recently-available exam data (currently for 2023/24). These scores are an official metric showing how quickly pupils progressed compared to their peers, from when they left primary school to when they took their GCSEs.
We’ve only included schools with a score above 0, considered a positive score overall. It’s also worth noting that performance data has now been finalised, so results and placings may differ slightly from earlier reports based on interim results.
But performance isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to what makes a school a great place to learn, so we’ve also limited the list to schools with positive ratings in their latest Ofsted inspections. These are going through some changes at the moment, but we’ve restricted our list to those with a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall grade under the previous system, or positive ratings across all categories under the current one. This means that quality of education, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and safeguarding practices all met or exceeded Government standards.
Here are the 17 local schools that made the cut:
1. Bedford Free School
This is a secondary academy in Bedford, most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an extraordinary Progress 8 score of 1.11, placing it in the ‘well above average’ band - the highest available. | Google
2. Goldington Academy
This is another Bedford-based secondary academy, which was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, it had a ‘well above average’ Progress 8 score of 0.85. | Google
3. Denbigh High School
Denbigh is a secondary academy in Luton, most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, it had a ‘well above average’ Progress 8 score of 0.8. | Google
4. Challney High School for Girls
As its name might suggest, this is a girls’ secondary academy in Challney, Luton. It was most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, it had a ‘well above average’ Progress 8 score of 0.74. | Google