Westbourne School in Sheffield achieves 'excellent' rating in latest national inspection

Sheffield’s only non-selective, co-educational private school received the accolade for areas ranging from pupils’ personal development to academic and other achievements.

The ISI inspects all independent schools in the UK and reports to the Department for Education on school compliance with The Independent School Standards.

The report identified that pupils are highly fluent when speaking and writing, possess wholly positive attitudes across many areas of learning and have highly developed study skills, with all pupils shown to be making strong progress over time.

The key personal development findings observed that pupils are highly respectful and inclusive, have deep self-awareness, are passionate advocates for fair play and sustain a strong school culture of mutual support.

Headmaster, John Hicks, said: “This is my third full Education Quality Inspection (EQI) at Westbourne and we have never before achieved judgments as high as this in this section.

“The inspectors cited significant evidence in order to award us this level of excellence in education and these resonate greatly with our school values of Excellence, Inclusion, Resilience and Respect.

“Thank you to the Westbourne team for their outstanding efforts in the years leading up to this result.”

In the Focused Compliance Inspection - where standards are classified as met or unmet - Westbourne passed five out of eight categories, with the exception of the Single Central Record for staff (SCR), where recruitment and vetting checks were found to require some improvement.

These issues had no impact on the welfare, health or safety of the school’s children and Westbourne’s pastoral and safeguarding team, its policies, procedures and approach to safeguarding and protecting pupils, were all praised by inspectors.

Westbourne's Chair of Governors, Dorrien Peters, commented: “We thank ISI for the time they spent at Westbourne inspecting our school.

“We are proud that the quality of our educational provision achieved excellent status in all sixteen categories.

“The three ISI action points have already been addressed since the inspection was undertaken in January 2022.

“We are committed to achieving excellence in all that we do and the Governing Body is enormously grateful to all staff, pupils and parents for the commitment, loyalty, and outstanding support they have shown throughout this process.”