Salford school returns to favour with Ofsted

A STATE-AIDED Charedi girls’ high school is back in Ofsted inspectors’ good books less than 18 months after being ranked as inadequate — the lowest grade.

Beis Yaakov academy in Salford, which has 279 girls aged from 11 to 16, has “improved rapidly and significantly” since its last inspection and is now rated a good school, according to a report published this week.

Praising the school’s leaders for providing a strong sense of direction, Ofsted said that its governance had “improved beyond measure” and that most pupils reached “high levels of attainment”.

The school had previously been heavily criticised for offering girls too little opportunity to learn about other faiths and cultures.

But the latest inspection found that “provision in citizenship has been expanded to allow an even greater focus on pupils’ understanding of the diversity of life in modern Britain”.

The curriculum was “broad, balanced and responsive” to the needs of pupils, who performed “significantly above average” in mathematics.