Bradford has some quite unusual challenges in education which are often not taken into account by the league tables which consistently place the district relatively low.
As the Telegraph & Argus has shown in the past, there are many different languages spoken in some of our schools, which means that the teaching staff in those places have to work extra hard to ensure a cohesive level of education is being offered to all the pupils.
One prime example of this is St Philip’s CE Primary School in Girlington, Bradford, where every child is designated as being from an ethnic minority background and where the majority of pupils speak English only as a second language.
Perhaps inevitably, the school was last year given the lowest possible rating by Ofsted inspectors who, in their damning report, cited poor teaching, a lack of pride from pupils, and low expectations.
But the staff, pupils, governors and parents at the school did not merely bow to this inevitability of languishing in the doldrums. They worked hard and pulled together and Ofsted’s latest inspection has seen a vast improvement, reflected in an improved rating.
Everyone at the school is to be congratulated for pulling up their collective socks and vowing to change things for the better, and for achieving such an improvement in a relatively short space of time.
It goes to show that the bald facts of league tables and exam results never tell the whole story of just how much hard work and determination to make things better there is in evidence in the schools in Bradford.
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