Bennett parents will be aware that this week the school had its long awaited Ofsted inspection. I would like to thank all parents and friends of the school for their prayerful support of our work, particularly this week. In particular I would like to express our appreciation for the enormous amount of highly supportive and positive feedback parents sent in to the inspection team, via the Ofsted questionnaire. This is very important to us, and has been quite humbling.

This morning, we thanked students formally for their excellent behaviour and approach during the week. They exhibited, without exception, a very clear wish to present the school in a strong light, and support their teachers as well as they possibly could. We will be finding a way to mark this with them later on next week.

The formal details of the inspection findings are not yet in the public domain. As soon as I am given permission to share them, I will do so, and all parents will be sent a copy of the report, which will also be available on the website. I will only say at this point that we are absolutely delighted with the judgements the inspectors made, and that those judgements support and fully endorse everything we know about the superb quality of education and care offered at the school. I am confident that every parent, on reading the report, will share our sense of pride in what we all achieve.

These comments would, of course, not be complete if I did not publicly pay tribute to the total commitment of all our staff, teachers and others, not only during the inspection period, but throughout the year. Strong teams and consistency, as well as great individual teachers, produce this kind of success. The Bennett staff are the most dedicated group of people with whom I have had the privilege to work.

Finally, as I said to students this morning, it is not quite all over yet. As a Church of England school, we also have what is known as a Section 28, or ‘SIAS’ (Statutory Inspection of Anglican Schools) inspection. This will be taking place on Monday and Tuesday of next week, and the focus will be especially on Religious Education, assemblies, and tutor groups. I know that parents and students will want to continue to support us as we demonstrate our strengths in these areas as well.