Cambridgeshire's 'outstanding' secondary schools as Ofsted announces new ratings overhaul

Cambridgeshire's 'outstanding' secondary schools will see their ratings change after education regulator Ofsted introduced a new system for grading schools. The previous rating system of issuing schools with an overall one or two-word grade – Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Inadequate – will be scrapped from September.

Ofsted will continue to inspect schools, but will now only issue gradings related to individual aspects of a school's performance in a 'report card'. During its latest round of inspections, carried out between September 1, 2023, and July 31 this year, Ofsted inspected 655 secondary schools.

Of those, 137 schools – about one in five, or 21% – were told they had achieved the highest possible rating. But including schools last inspected before the last school year, there were 495 'outstanding' schools in England, as of July 31.

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That means 15% of English schools were rated Outstanding before the changes, with variation across the country. In London, one in four schools were rated Outstanding at their last inspection (27%), the highest proportion of any English region.

That was followed by the South East (17%), East of England (16%), and Yorkshire and the Humber (16%). The North West had the lowest proportion of Outstanding schools (8%).

You can see the Cambridgeshire schools near you that were rated 'outstanding' at their last inspection using our interactive map below.

For future inspections this academic year, parents will see grades across the existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. Ofsted will continue to inspect schools against the same standards, but will now only issue gradings related to individual aspects of a school's performance.

'Outstanding' Cambridgeshire secondary schools

The Cambridgeshire schools rated 'outstanding' in the last year were:

• Swavesey Village College;

• Soham Village College;

• St Bede's Inter-Church School.

Schools rated 'outstanding' at their last inspection up to the end of August 2023 were:

• Bottisham Village College;

• Comberton Village College;

• Cambourne Village College;

• Chesterton Community College;

• Parkside Community College;

• The King's (The Cathedral) School;

• Arthur Mellows Village College.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said: "The need for Ofsted reform to drive high and rising standards for all our children in every school is overwhelmingly clear. The removal of headline grades is a generational reform and a landmark moment for children, parents and teachers.

"Single-headline grades are low information for parents and high stakes for schools. Parents deserve a much clearer, much broader picture of how schools are performing – that’s what our report cards will provide. This Government will make inspection a more powerful, more transparent tool for driving school improvement. We promised change and now we are delivering."

The changes come after several years of debate within education about whether one overall grade can sum up the complexity of a school. That debate intensified after an inquest in 2023 found an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of head teacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life after learning her school was set to be graded 'inadequate'.

The Department for Education said the old system did not give a fair assessment of schools and was only supported "by a minority of parents and teachers". Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said: "We have been clear that simplistic one-word judgments are harmful and we are pleased the Government has taken swift action to remove them.

"We are equally pleased that the Government intends to place a stronger emphasis on supporting schools to improve where they need help, rather than defaulting to heavy-handed intervention or knee-jerk changes of governance structures."