Mark Rutherford School

Our school is located in the northern part of Bedford with good links to the surrounding counties of Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes. We are a standalone academy that secured its status in 2013 and are a company by a limited guarantee.

We became a secondary school in 2010 when a local middle school was closed. More recently Bedford Borough moved from a three tier to a two tier education system and we increased our Year 7 intake from a PAN of 60 to what is currently 200. We are significantly oversubscribed with over 1300 students on role, to include over 200 in our very successful Sixth Form. Students join us in Year 7 from a wide number of primary schools. We are proud of our broad and balanced curriculum which ensures students have the opportunity to explore a variety of subjects before making choices for Key Stages 4 and 5, as well as the wider personal development opportunities on offer. We have a ‘good’ Ofsted rating having been inspected in March 2020.

We believe that every child is unique. We aim to set high expectations for our students whilst also providing them with personalised learning experience that enable them to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make positive contributions and to achieve economic well-being. We provide students with opportunities and experiences to succeed both socially and academically. We see education in its broadest sense and as a lifelong experience.

We also believe that a strong, supportive and effective home school partnership ensures our students achieve to the best of their abilities. Ofsted commented that ‘pupils enjoy school’ and that ‘they feel safe, well supported and cared for’. In addition our pupils ‘become confident and independent young people’.

Teaching and learning is good. We have two key whole school focus areas linked to Rosenshine’s principles of instruction and retrieval practice. Rosenshine’s principles have been personalised for our school in order to further develop teachers’ day-to-day pedagogy. Whole school and department meetings have dedicated CPD time to support both of these areas. In addition, we have teacher coaches to support staff with their personal and professional development needs.

We also have our own autism provision known as the Nightingale Unit. This has twenty students with an EHCP which has an ASC diagnosis as their primary need. Students start in Year 7 and can continue through to the end of Year 13. Their curriculum offer is personalised to meet their needs and includes three qualified teachers and a number of Teaching Assistants. Ofsted commented that this provision ‘is well integrated into the life of the school’ and that this ‘helps support all pupils appreciation of diversity’.

Our inspirational learning environment is a result of substantial capital investment. We want to provide our students with the best learning facilities to enhance their learning experience. We recently opened our new £2 million STEM facility comprising of seven classrooms, to include a brand new ICT suite and a lecture theatre. In addition, we have our own full size all weather 3G pitch and are the only school in the UK to have their own planetarium. We are lucky to be supported by local charities who have invested heavily into the school, to include a recent refurbishment of a science lab to ensure it is state of the art to support the delivery of our A Level Chemistry curriculum.

We are proud of the personal development opportunities on offer outside of the curriculum. Students are able to engage in wide range of extra-curricular activities from sporting fixtures and clubs to include Warhammer and chess. In addition, many trips are on offer to include to London theatres as well as further afield with residential visits to New York, Borneo, Peru and Austria. We recognise that developing our students outside of the curriculum broadens their horizons and enhances their engagement with school. Ofsted commented that our pupils ‘thrive on the wide range of interesting sports, arts and technology clubs that they can attend’.

Staff and student wellbeing is an important feature of our school. Staff have access to a termly wellbeing newsletter to signpost them to strategies and external support, if required. A number of staff wellbeing activities are on offer from boot camp to yoga. There is a personalised programme of support available to meet the needs of staff too. Ofsted noted that our teachers ‘feel well supported and believe that leaders are actively thinking about staff well-being’. For students we work with a number of external agencies to include those local to Bedford Borough as well as a number of Business Mentors.