Brighstone CE Primary School is celebrating achieving a ‘good’ rating from Ofsted following a recent inspection. Children, staff and parents have been left delighted by the news, which recognises improvements made at the school in recent years. The report praises the village school, highlighting the children’s good behaviour along with the pride they take in their school. Inspectors recognised the steps the school had taken to improve on its previous rating of ‘requires improvement’ by taking “decisive action to improve the curriculum and pupils’ learning” and demonstrating “robust systems to check how well pupils are learning”. It found children to be “confident and fluent readers” and pupils with special educational needs were “appropriately supported with their learning”. As well as improvement in the curriculum taught at the school, the report highlighted how pupils benefit from many wider opportunities which “give them an understanding of what their local area, and beyond, has to offer”. Inspectors found children were proud of their contributions to the Brighstone Horticultural Show and performances with their choir or country dancing at community events. School trips to the mainland, such as a recent visit to the British Museum in London, help to “build pupils’ cultural understanding as well as enhancing their learning in the classroom”. Pupils’ curiosity about the natural world is also encouraged and nurtured at the school. During their visit, inspectors observed children showing excitement about blue tits they could see nesting near their classroom, with staff helping them to use books to find out about other birds and new vocabulary. Steve Fairclough, Chair of Governors, comments:
“I and my fellow Governors are incredibly proud of the continued hard work that all the staff do at Brighstone. The Ofsted Good rating validates the quality of education offered at our school”.
Headteacher Rebecca Lennon has said:
“We are delighted that Ofsted has recognised our school as being ‘good’ in all areas. We welcome the positive comments in the report which reflects all the hard work which goes on in our close-knit school – a school which pupils are rightly proud of. “We look forward to continuing our journey to build on our successes to give the children the very best start to their education.”
It hasn’t been such positive news for Brighstone’s pre-school though, which has dropped to a ‘requires improvement’ rating following an inspection last month, as previously reported by Island Echo.


























































































Lovely to still have schools where the children can ,at a distance , learn about different cultures yet without having to have their own culture, which is now far more fragile, at risk of being swallowed up by such. Also lovely to see happy bright faces, not sullen, permanent chip on shoulders types.
Well done and let’s hope it continues despite the massive building of Brighstone with less local residents.
The extra residents will help keep the school open.
One school that likely won’t be closed seeing all the new houses being built there.
Shocking to see such a lovely spot being built up so much, suppose all mainland escapees from the scourge of illegals destroying their culture for their children.
And yet that housing went to locals first. Still, shame to spoil a good bit of BS for you eh? Maybe you wanted the school closed through lack of pupils?
That’s to lure the poor unfortunate school into a false sense of security then the next visit will pick on any tiny detail to give a failing report. That depresses the staff which cause a blanket cloud of unhappiness over the whole school.
Perhaps the ‘staff’ will then know what it feels like to be a child, after being criticised for something that is either too difficult for them, or they have done their best but still not enough to please all.
Think of the children, not paid, and paid well staff, just for cutting up a few shapes out of paper, or teaching a few simple sums or words each day.
Blimey it must be a very very long time since you set foot in a school. Lack of success still smarts then? The top year in primary is aged 11…that’s algebra, subjunctive forms and fronted adverbials. No paper shapes in sight.