The School Record

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

The Firs Lower School

URN 137756 · Primary · Academy converter · Central Bedfordshire

Station Road, Bedford, MK45 2QR

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, 55 families named The Firs Lower School as their first preference, and the school made 60 offers.

That is 0.92 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 26% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 26% of comparable schools position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2025 intake

Little change. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.89 in 2021–2022 and 0.88 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Reception, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 55 132 60 0.92
2024 50 127 60 0.83
2023 53 126 52 1.02
2022 34 87 44 0.77
2021 30 88 30 1.00
2020 42 99 42 1.00
2019 32 80 32 1.00
2018 52 98 52 1.00
2017 42 100 42 1.00
2016 58 116 59 0.98
2015 46 86 45 1.02
2014 51 98 55 0.93

“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 ungraded inspection, 9 March 2023

School remains Good

Ofsted's report for this school

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 11.5 11.5 0.0 0.0 0.0%
2023/24 12.2 11.4 0.0 0.8 6.6%
2022/23 12.1 8.8 1.7 1.6 27.3%
2021/22 12.7 11.1 0.0 1.6 12.6%
2020/21 11.8 10.6 0.0 1.3 11.0%
2019/20 10.9 10.9 0.0 0.0 0.0%

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 The Firs Lower 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.