Ofsted

An extract from a letter from Mr Farrell (Headteacher) regarding the inspection in November 2023:

"Albemarle was last inspected in 2009 and there have been significant changes to the inspection framework since then. As you will see from the report, the school has been graded as a ‘Good’ school. A greatly amended Ofsted framework, alongside an exact (rather than a best-fit approach), has made the grade of ‘outstanding’ extremely challenging for schools to achieve. Chris Russell, Ofsted’s National Director of Education recently described how some ‘outstanding’ schools which have improved since their last inspection may still be downgraded because the bar has been raised under the latest Ofsted inspection framework. He stated that if a previously ‘outstanding’ school receives a ‘good’ grade it “doesn’t mean that the school has declined in recent years, in fact the opposite can be the case”. He said this was because the top grade is a “challenging and exacting judgment to achieve” under the current inspection framework.

The senior leadership team and staff believe that a ‘Good’ judgement is a fair and realistic assessment of where the school is today. I joined the school in January and recognised that there were many key strengths at Albemarle but also that there was work needed in certain areas- particularly in relation to the wider curriculum (some subjects outside of maths, English and science). That work is already well underway and I am much happier with the breadth and depth of our wider curriculum offering; we just need time to properly embed all of the significant changes that we have recently introduced.

There is a great deal within the report that we are incredibly proud of. Most importantly, the inspectors highlighted how ‘pupils are happy and kept safe’ at Albemarle. Our children ‘display positive attitudes to learning’ and they are ‘respectful and polite to one another, staff and visitors’. One of Albemarle’s many strengths is the diversity of our school community and inspectors recognised how this ‘is celebrated, threaded through the curriculum and represented in the books pupils read’. Our children ‘study an ambitious curriculum’ that is ‘typically well implemented’."