School page
Ridgeway School: safeguarding context
The safeguarding context around Ridgeway School: what the public record says about the streets, routes and roads children use to reach it, and what that means for the school's policy. This page describes the surroundings. It does not rate the school.
The register entry
- Unique reference number
- 109742
- Type
- Community special school
- Type group
- Special schools
- Status
- Open
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Age range
- 2 to 19
- Gender
- Mixed
- Religious character
- Does not apply
- Pupils on roll
- 125
- Free school meals
- 36.2 percent
- UK provider reference number
- 10017325
- Postcode
- MK42 7EB
- Country
- England
- Register last checked
- 23 September 2026
Local authority: Bedford (85 open schools).
About this school's place in the register
Ridgeway School is listed in the Department for Education's register of schools, Get Information About Schools, under unique reference number 109742. The register records it as a community special school, in the group the Department calls special schools. Its UK provider reference number is 10017325. The register was last checked on 23 September 2026.
The statutory age range is 2 to 19, which is the span of ages the school is registered to admit; the routes children take to the gate, and how independently they travel, follow from it. The intake is recorded as mixed. At the last school census 125 pupils were on roll, and 36.2 percent of them were eligible for free school meals, a figure the report uses only to describe the catchment, never the school. The register holds a website address for the school, linked below.
The school is in England, at postcode MK42 7EB. Its grid reference is easting 502114, northing 246686, which is latitude 52.1091 and longitude -0.5103. That point is the centre of everything the safeguarding context report measures: the streets within a short walk, the routes to the nearest transport and shops, the roads at the gate, and the neighbourhood statistics that surround it.
Ridgeway School sits in the Bedford local authority area, which has 85 open establishments in the register. The local authority is the body that publishes the local safeguarding partnership arrangements, the threshold document and the early help offer that a school's child protection policy refers to, so the same authority context applies to every school in Bedford.
The nearest schools in the register to Ridgeway School are Kempston Academy (about 120 metres away), Balliol Primary School (about 580 metres away), Kempston Rural Primary School (about 860 metres away), Greys Education Centre (1.1 km away) and Rivertree Free School (1.4 km away). Distances are straight lines between grid references, not walking routes. Several schools within walking distance of each other share the same streets, crossings, parks and shops, so the context described for one usually applies to its neighbours too.
What the report for Ridgeway School contains
An annual report, written for the Designated Safeguarding Lead, that reads the public record for the environment around this school and says what it means in the language of Keeping Children Safe in Education and contextual safeguarding. Each chapter is mapped to the policy paragraph, the governors' annual report or the inspection question it evidences. The recorded picture at the gate comes from UK Crime Statistics, our sister service; the rest is evidence a crime map does not carry.
- The recorded picture at the gate. Police-recorded incidents within a short walk, from UK Crime Statistics, described as the streets a child crosses rather than as a score, and turned into the context paragraph the policy asks for.
- Exploitation indicators. The public signals of criminal and sexual exploitation in the area, and what a DSL can and cannot read into them.
- Places and routes where risk sits. Parks, shops, transport stops and underpasses on the way in, drawn from the data rather than from reputation.
- Road danger at the gate. Collisions involving pedestrians and cyclists on the surrounding roads, with what a School Street request needs.
- Air quality and catchment deprivation. The neighbourhood statistics that shape the context, printed with their limits.
- Policy paragraph, governor paragraph and inspector questions. Ready to paste, answered from the findings above.
With the report comes the insight dashboard for Ridgeway School: the trend by month, every category, the streets that recur and the comparison with Bedford and the national picture, live for the year.
Nearest schools
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Get Information about Schools, Department for Education.