The School Record

Published admissions and inspection figures for schools in England, from the DfE, Ofsted and local authorities.

Cotton End Forest School

URN 109446 · Primary · Community school · Bedford

High Road, Bedford, MK45 3AG

How many families applied

Preferences expressed and offers made at Reception, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand. They do not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.

In the 2025 intake, 67 families named Cotton End Forest School as their first preference, and the school made 59 offers.

That is 1.14 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 87% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 87% of comparable schools position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2025 intake

Fewer families are naming it first. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.23 in 2021–2022 and 1.1 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Reception, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 67 104 59 1.14
2024 64 114 60 1.07
2023 48 84 48 1.00
2022 68 119 60 1.13
2021 80 115 60 1.33
2020 55 101 56 0.98
2019 39 77 44 0.89
2018 30 64 30 1.00
2017 14 35 14 1.00
2016 20 41 15 1.33
2015 19 37 15 1.27
2014 17 31 15 1.13

“Offers made” counts the offers the school made. It is not the number of places the school had, so please do not read it as one.

Ofsted

Ofsted changed its inspection framework: the current one publishes several graded areas and no single overall grade, while the previous one published an overall effectiveness grade. Each inspection below states which framework produced it.

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 20 May 2025

Overall effectiveness: Not judged

Quality of education: Good

Behaviour and attitudes: Good

Personal development: Good

Leadership and management: Good

Early years: Good

Sixth form / post-16: 9

Ofsted's report for this school

Exam results

Published by the Department for Education for the whole year group. Figures for smaller cohorts are withheld by DfE to protect pupil privacy and appear here as a dash, not a zero.

Key stage 2 (end of primary)
Year Expected standard in reading, writing & maths Higher standard Average reading score Average maths score
2024/25 77.0% 0.0% 107.0 106.0
2023/24 59.0% 0.0% 102.0 103.0
2022/23 41.0% 0.0% 101.0 102.0

Teachers staying and leaving

These come from the School Workforce Census, which follows each teacher into the next year. The numbers count full-time jobs, so a teacher who works half the week counts as half. They are not a count of people.

Census yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2024/25 17.0 14.0 0.0 3.0 17.6%
2023/24 16.0 13.0 1.0 2.0 18.8%
2022/23 14.0 12.0 2.0 0.0 14.3%
2021/22 12.0 10.0 0.0 2.0 16.7%
2020/21 10.0 10.0 0.0 0.0 0.0%
2019/20 9.4 9.0 0.4 0.0 4.3%

This is turnover among teachers. It says nothing about the headteacher or the senior leadership team: DfE publishes leadership retention separately and we do not hold it by school.

Catchment area

Nobody publishes a catchment area map for this school that we can read. That does not mean an address is outside its area. It means we hold no map, so we cannot tell you either way.

Where it is

The 6 nearest primary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Cotton End Forest School.

Nearby and related

Where these figures come from

This page was made on 9 September 2026. "Retrieved" means the day we downloaded the data. It is not the day the data was written, so the figures can be about an earlier year. How we compare schools.