Bishop Fleming achieves Outstanding Ofsted rating
Professional services firm Bishop Fleming has confirmed its status as one of the final organisations to receive a one-word evaluation from Ofsted. The UK’s education ombudsman rated the company’s apprenticeship provision as ‘Outstanding’, shortly before the government announced it would be axing the controversial ratings system.
Bishop Fleming is an independent provider of audit, accountancy, tax, and advisory services in the UK. The firm boasts a turnover of £43.1 million, and saw growth of almost 13% over the last 12 months. The firm helps to drive this growth by onboarding new talent from all walks of life.
The audit and advisory brand’s established apprenticeship programme is varied and enables some apprentices to experience all areas of the business while others develop a deeper specialism in one area. This is supplemented with coaching, mentoring, and study leave.
An Ofsted team inspected Bishop Fleming over three days in July 2024, visiting several offices, meeting with various learning and development team members, apprentices and their managers. They examined five areas: quality of education, personal development, behaviours and attitudes, leadership and management, and apprenticeships. Ultimately, this saw the apprenticeship offering receive an ‘Outstanding’ rating from Ofsted.
Partner and Chief People Officer Anna Averis said of the news, "We are thrilled to receive this recognition for our leading apprenticeship programme, which is now officially rated among the very best in UK. As one of only a few accounting firms to have been awarded Employer-Provider status, we have been able to develop and deliver our own tailored apprenticeship programme, so to have this independent recognition is testament to the hard work of my team and our brilliant apprentices. Our programme is now delivering real results and is integral to our wider business growth ambitions.”
The result was the programme’s first full inspection in July, and is one of only 18 employer providers to have achieved Outstanding status so far in 2024. It also became only the second accountancy firm in the UK to achieve the rating. It is not set to be matched by further firms, either.
Weeks after the inspection, the new government has announced that it is shelving the “reductive” one-word ratings system. Instead, the department for education will now consult the education sector on a new report-card model, to be introduced in September of 2025. In the meantime, institutions inspected from September will only receive four grades across existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.
Fortunately for Bishop Fleming, there are two other commendations which it can still point to as indicators of excellence for its apprenticeships. Earlier in the year, Bishop Fleming was recognised among some of the largest organisations in the UK in the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers List for 2024 – a ranking co-developed by the Department for Education, to recognise leading apprenticeship employers for their overall commitment to employing apprentices. Placing in the Top 100 for the third year in a row, the firm has seen its ranking increase from 41st to 27th, making it the highest ranked South-West headquartered professional services firm in the Top 100.
The news comes as the firm welcomes another cohort of apprentices to its business, taking the number of new apprentices in 2024 to over 70. That makes for a fifth successive year of record-breaking apprentice recruitment.
Bishop Fleming’s Managing Partner Andrew Sandiford added, "To be rated Outstanding by Ofsted and recognised alongside some major employers in the country such as the British Army, BT and Amazon is a fantastic achievement for our business. Our investment in our own apprentice programme demonstrates our commitment to attracting the very best talent and the future leaders of our business.”
