Happy New Year and welcome back to Beckfoot.
What a start we have had to 2025. I cannot recall a more challenging start to a term but I am hopeful that you feel that we got it right for the most part. I want to thank you for the incredible number of emails of support but also I know that the decisions I made last week were not for everyone and for that I am sorry.
My strong desire last week was to provide families with the opportunity to send their children to school and to not be completely dictated to by the weather. We are more fortunate than most in that our school is fairly low lying and our site is reasonably flat. Those two factors helped enormously alongside a site team and staff that shared my belief that we needed to be open for our community. We learned a great deal about gritting (!) but also a huge amount about our students, staff and families. I am convinced that we became a closer community last week and I was thrilled by the determination and dedication of our students and staff. I was also hugely grateful for the willingness of families to trust our decision to open with over 93% attendance each day.
Despite the challenges of the weather and the site, we have begun 2025 with a vigour and zest. Our external exams have taken place for some Year 13 with students feeling that they have done very well. We have welcomed visitors from Multi Academy Trusts in North Yorkshire who are extremely interested in lots of the work taking place at Beckfoot and we are being approached more and more by Trusts across the country who want to experience our school with our next visitors coming from the Midlands later this half term. It is exciting to welcome guests to Beckfoot but also to be able to go to see those schools and learn best practice from them.
Sporting success has continued in Badminton and Table Tennis. Our Key Stage 4 Badminton teams finished 2nd and 4th in this year’s Bradford leagues and our Table Tennis teams have enjoyed huge success in the West Yorkshire County Championships. A special mention goes to Noah who progressed through the group stages, quarter final and semi-finals to finish 2nd in the county, an amazing achievement.
Yesterday, our commitment to Bradford City of Culture 2025 was in evidence through our Year 8 Creative Arts Wider Curriculum Day. We do these drop-down days a lot throughout the year for all year groups but yesterday was dedicated solely to the arts. Our students enjoyed workshops in Art, Textiles, Design, Dance, Music and Food. It was a superb day and the students and staff thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the importance of the arts and how they link to the city they live in the year ahead through the Capital of Culture plans for Bradford. The thing I was most proud of was two particular pieces of feedback:
“Sometimes we take for granted how great Beckfoot is. Days like today remind us how lucky we are to be in a school that sees the importance of Creativity, that wants students to flourish and experience different things, and for those students to take hold and run with it”
“Unfortunately, due to the cultural vandalism that continues to sideline creativity in schools up and down the country, there are very few schools that would attempt a day like today. Importantly to us, there are very few staff who would continually go the extra mile to empower and inspire students to make their education special”
Continuing the theme of Bradford, Capital of Culture 2025, several of our students have been secretly busy in recent months preparing for the launch RISE event in Centenary Square last weekend. Despite the cold, more than 20,000 people came over two nights to see a most incredible show. We had Flo and Monroe involved in the aerial and dance performances and Dorian playing the young magician Stephen Frayne (formerly known as Dynamo). Dorian is a long-term budding magician and actor and was thrilled to be given the honour of playing the part in the opening ceremony, RISE.
Dorian, who is pictured alongside Stephen Frayne in this week’s Radio Times, will also feature in the upcoming TV documentary “Bradford’s Big Bash” to be shown on BBC 1 tonight, Friday 17th January at 7.30PM. I cannot wait to watch it and to see all three of our wonderful students taking part. I am so incredibly proud of them all.
Finally, I need your help please. As many of you know, we are due an Ofsted inspection before July 2025 and the views of our parents and carers are an especially important part of that process. I believe that we are doing incredible things at Beckfoot and the school is one of the very best in West Yorkshire if you consider things such as exam outcomes (best ever in our history last year), behaviour (best in the city this year), attendance at 94% (nearly back to pre-pandemic levels of 96%), parental engagement (e.g. over 95% average attendance to parents evenings), enrichment and personal development opportunities including the Arts, Sport, Debating, Careers provision and so much more. I know we are not perfect, but I really want any inspection team who come to visit us to see what I see every day, how wonderful our students are, the progress they are making and the young people they are becoming. So, if you could spare just a few minutes to complete the Parent View questionnaire, I would be really grateful.
Thank you for reading, and as always, take care.
Simon Wade, Headteacher
