Bedford Free School
URN 138228 · Secondary · Free schools · Bedford
Cauldwell Street, Bedford, MK42 9AD
How many families applied
Preferences expressed and offers made at Year 7, 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, 190 families named Bedford Free School as their first preference, and the school made 108 offers.
That is 1.76 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 96% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.
position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2025 intake
Fewer families are naming it first. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 2.13 in 2021–2022 and 1.83 in 2024–2025.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 190 | 376 | 108 | 1.76 |
| 2024 | 189 | 358 | 99 | 1.91 |
| 2023 | 209 | 381 | 96 | 2.18 |
| 2022 | 223 | 411 | 111 | 2.01 |
| 2021 | 210 | 390 | 93 | 2.26 |
| 2020 | 182 | 335 | 98 | 1.86 |
| 2019 | 189 | 346 | 120 | 1.57 |
| 2018 | 117 | 205 | 119 | 0.98 |
| 2017 | 127 | 202 | 129 | 0.98 |
“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, 24 April 2025
Standards maintained
Ofsted's report for this school
Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 15 January 2020
Overall effectiveness: Outstanding
Quality of education: Outstanding
Behaviour and attitudes: Outstanding
Personal development: Outstanding
Leadership and management: Outstanding
Early years: 9
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.
| Year | Attainment 8 | Progress 8 | Grade 4+ English & maths | EBacc grade 4+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 46.50 | - | 62.2% | 40.8% |
| 2023/24 | 52.70 | 1.11 likely between 0.82 and 1.39 |
74.5% | 55.1% |
| 2022/23 | 51.00 | 0.99 likely between 0.67 and 1.31 |
71.6% | 52.6% |
Progress 8 compares pupils here with pupils nationally who had similar results at the end of primary school; 0 is average. It is an estimate, and DfE publishes a range it is likely to fall within. Where that range spans zero, the school cannot be said to be above or below average.
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 year | Teachers (FTE) | Still there a year later | Moved to another state school | Left state schools | Left in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 38.9 | 36.9 | 0.0 | 2.0 | 5.1% |
| 2023/24 | 38.6 | 33.3 | 3.0 | 2.3 | 13.7% |
| 2022/23 | 32.3 | 24.6 | 5.0 | 2.7 | 23.8% |
| 2021/22 | 38.4 | 26.6 | 6.4 | 5.4 | 30.7% |
| 2020/21 | 40.0 | 36.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 10.0% |
| 2019/20 | 36.0 | 32.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 11.1% |
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 secondary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Bedford Free School.
- Bedford Academy: 1.8 km (1.1 miles) south-east, Bedford
- Goldington Academy: 2.1 km (1.3 miles) north-east, Bedford
- Biddenham International School and Sports College: 2.1 km (1.3 miles) west, Bedford
- Daubeney Academy: 2.4 km (1.5 miles) south-west, Bedford
- St Thomas More Catholic School: 3.3 km (2.0 miles) north, Bedford
- Mark Rutherford School: 3.7 km (2.3 miles) north-east, Bedford
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Bedford Free School
- All schools in Bedford
- Schools in the MK42 postcode district
- What data we hold
- This page as JSON: the same figures, for software that would rather not read a web page
Where these figures come from
- Department for Education: Get Information about Schools. School identity, type, phase and address
Retrieved 2 September 2026 - Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information. Inspection outcomes, published monthly
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school-level applications and offers. Preferences and offers, 2017 to 2025 intakes
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: key stage 4 performance. Attainment 8, Progress 8 and EBacc, by school
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school workforce in England. Teacher turnover, by school, from the School Workforce Census
Retrieved 4 September 2026
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.