Welcome to Oldfield School
Oldfield School is a caring and vibrant school community. As a school graded ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted we converted to academy status in 2011. We are an 11-18 school with a comprehensive intake; we will admit boys into Year 7 from September 2012. We are justly proud of the high quality education which we provide. We insist on high standards: we expect students to work to the best of their ability, to behave in a way which shows courtesy to those around them and to wear their uniform smartly. We know that if we have high expectations of our students there is no limit to what they can achieve, the sky’s the limit!
We are extremely proud that Ofsted graded us “Outstanding” in their most recent inspection. In 2004 the DCSF designated us a High Performing Specialist School, one of the first seventy schools nationally to be given this accolade. We have Arts – with English as the lead subject as our main specialism, and Science and Sport as our additional specialisms. The specialisms are important because they bring in additional funding which we use to raise standards across the whole school. Since 2008 I have become a National Leader of Education, and Oldfield School a National Support School, helping other schools to improve.
I hope that this website gives you a flavour of our school. Oldfield School is a high achieving and successful school, but we are not complacent, there are always things we can improve on. We hope that you would like to visit the school, we would be delighted to welcome you.
Mrs Kim Sparling
Headteacher
Wizard of Oz success
It was fantastic to see so many students performing in the recent school production, The Wizard of Oz.
Since the Autumn Ms Bloomfield and Mrs Robinson have been undertaking auditions and rehearsals with the huge cast. On many a Tuesday evening we have enjoyed the practices as students got ready for the big week. It was a truly whole school production with those acting, singing and performing in the band coming from all the year groups. Many Sixth Formers also assisted with set, lighting, ticket sales and backstage. We also couldn’t have managed without the wonderful parents Mrs Willmott, Mrs Howse and Mrs Gorton who produced high quality costumes, sets and props. It was great to see the self confidence of so many students who took the plunge and performed in front of a large audience.
This year, for the first time, we had a community performance to which we invited residents from local senior citizens’ homes. It was lovely to see Oldfield students hosting our visitors with such care. A large number of seniors had a very enjoyable afternoon which reminded many of them of their school day performances with fondness.
Well done to everyone who was involved, all the hard work paid dividends.
‘Outstanding’ Judgement from Ofsted
We are pleased to report to the school community that our recent Ofsted inspection graded the school, once again, OUTSTANDING.
I’m sure that most people who know the school well were expecting that this would be the judgement as the school is always looking at ways to improve still further.
We received a “no notice” inspection which meant we simply had a phone call the afternoon before the two day inspection. Four inspectors were in school for two days in the second week of term. They had meetings with staff, governors and students, they visited lessons and assemblies, talked informally to students around the school, they looked at lots of school documentation such as the School Development Plan, school policies, safeguarding records etc and analysed the responses from parents.
We were delighted that the inspectors judged us to be OUTSTANDING in every category (Achievement, Teaching, Behaviour and Leadership and Management). The inspection team was very warm in its praise for our students, saying “Students’ behaviour in and outside of lessons is impeccable”.
We hope that everyone in the school community will share in our pride at this fantastic judgement.
Mrs Sparling,
Headteacher
View the full 2012 Ofsted Report - (PDF)
Oldfield celebrates exam success – top results amongst local state schools
We have started on a high note this term with 73% of Year 11 students gaining 5 A*-C GCSE including English and Maths, this is the yardstick which the government uses to measure schools in the league tables. In a year when GCSE results nationally have not gone up we are delighted that our 5 A*-C including English and Maths has gone up by 3% on the 2011 result. We are delighted that our students gained the highest result in all of the state schools in B&NES.
The GCSE results in general were strong with 86% of all grades being at A*-C, our students worked tremendously hard. We are now challenging our new Year 7 mixed cohort to do even better in five years time!
