OUTSTANDING!

St Christopher’s School has been deemed as ‘outstanding’ by schools inspectors both home and abroad.

The British curriculum school currently celebrating its 50th anniversary has come under the educational quality spotlight on two occasions in the past year.

Management and school governors have had to keep tight-lipped over the most recent findings for more than three months for administrative reasons, but proud principal Ed Goodwin was able to reveal all to parents this week.
 
He said: “To gain an ‘outstanding’ grade, it is actually only necessary to have the majority of areas thus rate ... we aced the lot!”

At the end of February St Christopher’s was inspected by the Bahrain government body The Quality Assurance Authority for Education and Training (QAAET) which is responsible for inspecting all schools, and it is the first time it has labelled a private school in the kingdom as ‘outstanding’.

The ruling followed a successful inspection against regulations quality assured by Ofsted (the UK government body responsible for school inspections in England and Wales) and accreditation against the standards set by British Schools in the Middle East.

Mr Goodwin explained: “Some will have been wondering why we took so long to report to parents on the results of this latest inspection – the answer is straightforward. We were told, at the end of the visit that we were ‘outstanding’ in every area BUT that schools are not permitted to publicise their results until the QAAET report has gone through all the final stages of the process, including approval by HRH, The Prime Minister’s Office.

“St Christopher’s agreed that it was important to observe this restriction – although we were champing at the bit! This process was completed at the start of June and, thus we were able, finally to send parents a link to the full report.” 

Mr Goodwin added: “St Christopher’s agreed that it was important to observe this restriction – although we were champing at the bit! This process was completed at the start of June and, thus we were able, finally to send parents a link to the full report.

“St Christopher’s was the first private school to be deemed ‘outstanding’ by QAAET. In addition, not only was the grading ‘outstanding’ overall and for each major area; we were also given the same rating in every sub-area as well.”

When the school was earlier inspected under the UK government approved regulations for British Schools Overseas (BSO) it was also deemed ‘outstanding’, using criteria almost identical to those applied to schools such as Eton, Harrow, Westminster, and all of the other major independent schools in England and Wales. 

A member of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, who has visited more than 1,000 schools in his varied career, congratulated Mr Goodwin and said that the judgement was ‘thoroughly deserved’. He also commented on the outstanding nature of students whom he had met during the visit.

One of the professional inspection team also said that the visit was ‘one of the most inspirational’ that he had ever been on. The BSO inspection report is now to be found on the UK Government’s Department for Education website.

*FI in Schools races ahead: Page 12 & 13