How bad is too bad?

I'd like to take the opportunity to canvass the views of those connected with St. Augustine's. The problem with the ISI report is that is it is a bit unspecific about what has happened. For instance, it says that on a small number of occasions the delay before obtaining a CRB check for a member of staff was "lengthy" without saying how long they meant by that. "Lengthy" is meaningless unless you have some idea in your mind as to what is the distinction between an understandable delay and an unacceptably "lengthy" one. As individuals we might have an idea about that, but we don't know whether our own ideas match those of the ISI.

We have no evidence that the situation ever became as bad as St. Benedict's is known to have been. At St. Benedict's people have been convicted and imprisoned for abuses committed by staff against pupils of the school, the school has had a civil judgement against it to the tune of £43,000 plus costs with regard to the damage done by an abusive teacher, and there is a further criminal trial due to take place this summer. To the best of our knowledge no comparable criminal convictions have happened in connection with St. Augustine's.

But to say that abuse at St. Augustine's hasn't been as bad as St. Benedict's is a pretty minimal compliment. Things could have been pretty awful at one time or another and we could still say this. So I would be interested to learn (and I hope others would be as well) what is an acceptable level of problem before parents start thinking that they should consider pulling their children out of the school.

For instance, we perhaps don't know the full story about the departure of Teacher A and Teacher B. We have the version the school presented in its Statement of Grounds, but that might not be all that the ISI discovered and used as the basis for its comments in the report about them. So here are a few points to ponder.

If it turned out that the activities of either of both of these teachers had been more harmful than so far disclosed, would this change your view of the school?


If there had been a significant delay between complaints being made and one of the teachers being removed from contact with children, would that increase your concern?


If one of the teachers sacked had started teaching at the school before their CRB check had come through, would this worry you?

If the CRB check of one of the sacked teachers had indicated that the teacher was unsuitable to work with children, would this be an issue?

Note that these are hypothetical questions. Since the ISI report doesn't give details about what has happened, speculation about what did happen is not all that helpful. What I'm trying to establish is where parents and others feel that the limits of acceptability lie.

Then we have the issue of the CRB checks. The ISI doesn't say how many checks were delayed, they don't say precisely what kinds of checks were delayed, they don't say how many staff have been permitted to teach at the school without having been fully checked, or for how long.

Is it acceptable for some staff to have started before their CRB checks had been completed, through some bureaucratic oversight? If so, how many would cause you concern that it wasn't a mere minor mistake but a serious problem? 1, 5, 10, 50? Where is your level of tolerance on this?


What is the maximum delay in a CRB check that you would be willing to write off as being a minor issue? 2 days? A week? A month? A term? A year?

Again, the ISI doesn't say how long or how many. I'm just trying to get an idea as to what would cause parents to think that enough is enough.

Then we have the question of the school's safeguarding policy. The ISI was quite critical about it, particularly in the fact that allegations were investigated within the school rather than being reported to the LADO. Various commenters have said that "no harm has been done", and if we define harm as criminal activity for which somebody has been convicted, then I agree, no harm has been done. But I suspect that most parents would expect that a school could protect their children to a somewhat higher standard than that, and so their threshold for harm is a good bit lower.

What level of harm (physical, mental or emotional) would you regard as the maximum that should be tolerated before a member of staff must be removed from access to children?


What level of harm would cause you to remove your child from the school if it turned out that the authorities had not acted to remove somebody from access to children?

But we need to consider not merely the severity of individual cases, but the number of cases where reports have failed to be made. Good safeguarding is essentially boring work, it requires good reporting and attention to detail, so that dangers can be discerned from patterns that have been built up.

How many cases could the school reasonably be allowed to get away with in terms of accidentally failing to report cases to the LADO which should have been reported?

Please note, in this article I'm not looking for estimates of how many cases or how bad are the cases that may have happened at St. Augustine's. For this article, I'll delete comments which speculate about that, whether the speculation is to the effect that the sky is falling in or that Mrs Gumley Mason is an angel and the school is second only to heaven itself in the care given to the pupils and the happiness they achieve as a result. The truth is undoubtedly somewhere in between, and we might find out in due course more precisely where. This discussion is intended to be about where parents and others think the limits should be. What is a forgiveable one-off error, and what is a systematic failure justifying remedial action?

A quick final thought before the meeting

It occurs to me that a possible approach that may be taken by Mrs Gumley Mason will be to try and pass off the ISI's criticisms as relatively minor, that they have all now been dealt with and there is no more reason to be concerned.

But consider this, The criticisms in the published report are the ones the school got upset about. So upset that they obtained a High Court injunction to prevent publication. High Court injunctions are neither sought nor granted casually. So they managed to persuade a very skeptical and hard-bitten judge that this was a really serious matter and that the school would suffer irreperable harm if the ISI report were to be unfairly published, and that they had a reasonable chance of demonstrating that the ISI's report was so unfair that no reasonable person could have reached the same conclusions.

Well, it has now been published, still containing the same criticisms. From the tone of Mrs Gumley Mason's accompanying letter, it would appear that they were hoping that nobody else would notice how devastating the report actually is.

I suggest you treat the crticisms in it as seriously as the school did when they initiated the High Court action.

Things to ask at the parents' meeting

These are some of the key questions that I hope somebody will ask at the parents' meeting on Friday. They are all questions which the Mrs Gumley Mason, the headmistress, or Mr David Murphy, the chairman of Trustees, should know the answers to.

I already know the answers to some of these questions. But I'm not going to give the answers right now, because I think it is for the school's representatives to give the answers.

• When was the first draft of the ISI report provided to the school?
• Did the school make a complaint against the ISI concerning the report?
• What was the reason for the complaint?
• What was the purpose of the legal action against the ISI?
• How much has been spent on this legal action, in costs, court fees and fees to the school's own solicitors?
• Did the school pay the ISI's costs?
• Who made the decision to proceed with legal action?
• When was the decision made?
• Was the decision formally approved at a meeting of the Governors? If so, when? 
• Can the minutes of the relevant governors' meeting be made available to parents?
• Was the decision formally approved at a meeting of the Trustees? If so, when?
• Can the minutes of the relevant trustees' meeting be made available to parents?
• Is there anything in the published version ISI report which the school thinks is incorrect or unfair?
• Is there anything in the ISI's overall conduct which the school thinks was unfair to the school?
• Who is the new "independent governor" mentioned in the ISI report who has been appointed?
• Was he or she known to the headmistress, any other members of staff or any governors or trustees prior to the search to appoint a new governor being started? If so, what is their connection, and how long have they known each other?
• What information was provided to the ISI that meant that the ISI felt able to describe the new governor as "independent"?
• If there was a previous connection between the new governor and somebody at the school, was this connection disclosed to the ISI?
• How many staff did the ISI find had been permitted to supervise children before their CRB, List 99 and/or other checks were completed?
• What is the longest period that the ISI found that a member of staff had been permitted to supervise children before the CRB and other checks were completed?
• How many CRB and other checks were still outstanding at the time of the ISI's 2nd visit on 4-6 May?
• Concerning the two members of staff whom the ISI stated should have been referred to the ISA on their departure, are the descriptions of events concerning them substantially complete as given in the Statement of Grounds? Or are there further points the ISI took into account?
• Have those two former members of staff now been reported to the ISA, including complete descriptions of the circumstances of their departure? If so, when, and if not, why not?
• Since the previous OFSTED inspection in 2006, has any other member of staff been sacked or resigned because they were considered unsuitable to work with children?
• In each case, did you make a report to the ISA (or prior to 2009 to the Teacher Misconduct Section of the DfE) within a month of their departure?
• Are any referrals to the ISA currently being prepared or expected to be sent in the near future?
• Since the OFSTED inspection in 2006, have there been any incidents or allegations of abuse involving any current members of staff, governors or trustees? If so, how many allegations/incidents, involving how many different people?
• Were all those cases reported to the LADO at the time?
• If not, will you now retrospectively make the necessary reports to the LADO, so that the LADO can decide whether they merit investigation?
• At the school, have there been any incidents or allegations of abuse involving Father Gregory Chillman, beyond the "inappropriate remark" mentioned in the Statement of Grounds? If so, what are they, and what was done in response?
• Did the ISI indicate that it was already aware of any  incidents or allegations of abuse at the school involving Father Gregory Chillman, beyond the "inappropriate remark" mentioned in the Statement of Grounds?
• When did Father Gregory Chillman resign as chaplain and Chairman of Governors?
• Was Father Gregory Chillman's resignation in any way connected with allegations concerning his suitability to supervise children?
• Were all allegations concerning Father Gregory Chillman reported to the LADO at the time? If not, have they been reported since?
• Has a referral to the ISA been made with respect to Father Gregory Chillman?
• Who was the main author of the current (February 2011) version of the Child Protection Policy?
• Who was the main author of the previous (2010) version of the Child Protection Policy?
• When will the wording of the Child Protection Policy be altered to make it clear that immediate reporting of all incidents and allegations of abuse to the LADO must occur? (without weasel words concerning marginal cases)
• When will the wording of the Child Protection Policy be altered to replace the grossly misleading definition of "sexual abuse", and the means by which it can be recognised?
• Will the Child Protection Policy be reviewed by an external expert, and his or her advice be taken regarding improvements to the policy and procedures?

If there have been allegations concerning the conduct of individual teachers, past or present, then it is likely that your daughters will have heard about them on the grapevine. Take the trouble to find out about them from your daughters, make notes, and use them to ask questions at the meeting. Time to clear the air.

If you want to contact me privately to ask about any of these or any other questions, my email address is jonathanwest22@googlemail.com. I will be checking it regularly tonight and tomorrow.

Letter to Trustees and Governors

22nd March 2011

To the Governors and Trustees of St. Augustine’s Priory School

Dear Sir/Madam


ISI Inspection of St. Augustine’s Priory School 

I am writing to you as a concerned member of the public with a former connection to the school. My daughter for a short time attended the Junior School at St. Augustine’s some years ago.

The Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) made an inspection of the school on 23^rd and 24^th March 2010, with a follow-up visit from 4-6 May 2010. A follow-up visit of this nature is highly unusual, as you can see from viewing reports of other schools on the ISI website www.isi.net.

The ISI was extremely critical of the safeguarding and child protection measures at the school, both in terms of written policy and actual practice, and found that the school was in breach of a variety of regulatory requirements. Specific criticisms included the following:

• The school failed to send a notification to the Independent Safeguarding Authority on occasions where a member of staff left the school in circumstances where they were considered unsuitable to work with children. At least two such occasions were identified.
  
• CRB and List 99 checks on staff have not been carried out with sufficient rigour, and new members of staff have been permitted unsupervised contact with children before their CRB checks had been completed. In a small number of cases the delay in obtaining the appropriate CRB check was “lengthy”.
  
• CRB checks with enhanced disclosure have not been obtained for all the governors and proprietors (i.e. the Trustees)
  
• The Central Register of Appointments has not been properly maintained.
  
• The school’s Child Protection Policy does not meet regulatory requirements, placing an inappropriate emphasis on investigation of allegations by the school rather than immediate referral of all incidents and allegations of abuse to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection (LADO).
  
• The Governors and Trustees were not kept adequately informed by the highest level of management within the school (i.e. the headmistress) and were insufficiently proactive in obtaining the information necessary to fulfil their statutory duties.

The school’s response to these criticisms appears to have been to initiate the complaints process within the ISI, and also to seek Judicial Review of the ISI report in the High Court Administrative Court. Case number CO/11444/2010 (St. Augustine's Priory School Ltd vs Independent Schools Inspectorate) was allocated to the case when the action was brought in early November. A temporary injunction prohibiting publication of the report was obtained on 1^st November 2010. The Secretary of State for Education was added as a party to the case on 6^th December 2010.

Both the complaint and the legal action have either failed or been abandoned. The injunction has been lifted, and the ISI provided the final version of the report to the school on 28th February 2011, and published the report on its own website 2 weeks later. The report still contains all the criticisms the school claimed were unjustified when it brought the action in High Court. Goodness only knows how much money this action has cost the school, since I suspect that with the failure of the action, the school has been required to pay the costs of all parties.  The money has presumably come out of charitable funds.

As required by law, the report was sent to parents, with a covering letter written by the Headmistress. The covering letter made no reference at all to any regulatory failings, and consequently also made no apology for the failures nor any mention of any action the school would be taking to rectify them.

For some years I have run a blog http://scepticalthoughts.blogspot.com/ which has become a campaigning website concerning child protection issues, particularly in the context of the measures needed to make St. Benedict’s School safe for children.

On my blog, I have published an analysis of the ISI Report on St. Augustine’s, putting it into plain language for parents. I have also published the entire text of the Statement of Grounds of the school’s complaint against the ISI, a document which can be obtained from the court and is in the public domain. I have also reviewed portions of the latest version of the school’s child protection policy, and found that even after the ISI’s criticisms, the sections defining “sexual abuse”, describing signs by which sexual abuse could be recognised, and procedures for reporting incidents and allegations to the LADO all remain woefully inadequate.

These documents have generated considerable interest. The blog has averaged more than 1000 page views per day over the last fortnight, and there have been a considerable number of comments from parents, staff and others. Some of these comments have been highly critical particularly of the Headmistress. Almost all have been made anonymously, some clearly stating that they remain anonymous out of fear that retaliation by the headmistress will be directed toward their daughters at the school. You are welcome to view the articles and the comments on the blog.

Apparently as a result of pressure from parents, the Headmistress has announced that there will be a parents’ meeting on Friday 25^th March in order to discuss the report. I urge you to attend the meeting in order to hear the parents’ concerns at first hand and to answer their questions.

I also urge you to ensure that the school’s Child Protection Policy is further revised and made a model of best practice. In particular I request that the policy is made fully compliant with clause 15.2.1 of the Ealing Safeguarding Children Board guidance, which states the following with regard to allegations of abuse by staff. “The employer must inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) immediately an allegation is made.”

I also request that you arrange for regular external checks to ensure that the revised policy is being diligently and effectively implemented, and that you ensure that any other outstanding regulatory failures are corrected as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely
 Jonathan West

Governors: 
Prof Geoffrey Bennett
Dr Marcella Dowling Brannagan
Mrs Harkreet Grewal
Prof Anne Hemingway
Mrs Audrey Kendall

Trustees: 
Mr. Colin Bennett
Rt Rev Kieran Conry
Mr Alexis Fitzgerald
Miss Claire McIntyre
Mr David Murphy
Mrs Claire Murphy
Miss Denise Neilson

Go to the meeting and speak up!

As I understand it, there is a parents' meeting on Friday at St. Augustine's, to discuss the ISI report.

If you are dissatisfied with the school's response to the ISI report, then I recommend that you go to the meeting and be prepared to speak and to ask difficult questions. Don't rely on others to do it for you.

As parents, you can chat amongst yourselves here or on the phone to each other as much as you wish, and nothing will change. Maybe you are OK with that. If you are OK that, then your daughters will go to the school you deserve. Unfortunately that might not be what they deserve, and you may find yourselves having to explain your inaction to your daughters in later years.

If you want things at the school to change, then you have to make your concerns known to those who have the power to do something about it. So you have to go to the meeting, and speak to Mrs Gumley Mason, and make your concerns known to her, and also to any governors and trustees who may also be present.

This is your daughters' safety we are talking about. The school's failings are in the field of child protection. If your child is harmed as a result of child protection failings, it will probably affect her much more than if she merely doesn't get a clean sweep of A* grades at A level.

I've spoken with adult survivors of abuse, and with members of their families. Believe me, you really don't want to risk this happening to your children. It wrecks lives and breaks up families.

You'll never get a better chance to make changes than now. If all of you who are concerned turn up, and don't rely on each other to take the lead, then you might achieve a lot at the meeting.

I can't guarantee that you will achieve what you want. But I can guarantee one thing. If you don't turn up, or if you turn up and are just silent, then you won't achieve anything.

Over to you.

Anonymous 04.47

Anonymous 04.47 has been commenting again. I'm not publishing any further comments from Anonymous 04.47 until one is received revealing 04.47's identity, as was promised on 21st March.

The only true ignorance is you not knowing who I am and here's the deal. Your blog on Sunday created dozens of responses but only one by an identifiable person, namely you. And I genuinely admire your braveness and the strength of your opinions, it is so much easier to stay in the shadows where the arrows always miss. You get one more person to support your views AND your methods, then I will come out of the shadows too.

Anonymous 04.47

A number of non-anonymous people have now commented, but I'm still waiting.

Just in case

Just in case Mrs Gumley Mason is contemplating legal action to try and close this site down, I have taken measures to combat this. I have backups securely stored and I have made arrangements so that the blog can be republished within hours (including all comments) on another domain.

In the unlikely event that you return to this blog and find it gone, just do a websearch for some of the key phrases you remember from the blog, and you will soon find its replacement. While the blog will be there, it might take a day or two for the major search engines to index it, so keep searching. Alternatively, send me an email to jonathanwest22@googlemail.com to ask for the new location.

For obvious reasons I'm not going to say now where the backup location is.

Blogs are like mushrooms, they spring up overnight.

Comments from pupils

A word of advice to pupils of any age at St. Augustine's who may be reading this blog.

Several people have commented with words to the effect that the Headmistress is a bully, and they are concerned that if they identify themselves then Mrs Gumley Mason will take it out on their children at the school.

I have no way of knowing whether that is a reasonable fear or not. I don't know Mrs Gumley Mason and have never met her. But you do know her. If this is a genuine and reasonable fear, then I recommend that you don't comment here unless your parents have checked the comment over first. Better still, whatever you were thinking of saying here, tell your parents instead and suggest that they write the comment. They are likely to be much more careful to word it so that identifying information isn't included by accident.

Comment from a parent

I'd just like to highlight the following comment made by a parent who was considering sending his or her daughter to St. Augustine's.

Just like to say thank you to Mr West. We had an offer for our daughter to attend St A's in September and paid the deposit. We have an offer from another school and were in the process of looking at the pros and cons of each before making a final decision. I've only just become aware of this issue so do not know how much truth there is in the allegations but even the smallest risk of a child's safety being put at risk is unacceptable. The more parents are made aware of the issues, the more likely you are to see change.

I would like to congratulate the parents on some trenchant good sense. Not specifically on the decision to choose or not choose St. Augustine's for their daughter, but rather on the fact that they are researching the matter and that they consider safety and welfare to be an extremely important factor in their choice of school.

With such loving and concerned parents, I'm sure your daughter will thrive.

Definitions of sexual abuse

The definition of sexual abuse in the new St. Augustine's child protection policy is as follows.

Sexual abuse can take many forms and while it is important to warn children about stranger abuse it should be remembered that up to 85% of children who are abused or assaulted are abused/assaulted by someone they know or a member of their family. Sexual abuse occurs when a child is forced or encouraged to behave in a sexually inappropriate way.

This is terrible. It tells you next to nothing about what sexual abuse is. That 85% number provides no information whatsoever which contributes to a definition, but it predisposes people to think that if a child is showing any signs of sexual abuse, then it's probably coming from the family.

This is the definition of sexual abuse from paragraphs 4.2.6 to 4.2.8 of the London Child Protection Procedures

4.2.6 Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, including prostitution, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including penetrative (e.g. rape, buggery or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts.

4.2.7 Sexual abuse includes abuse of children through sexual exploitation. Penetrative sex where one of the partners is under the age of 16 is illegal, although prosecution of similar age, consenting partners is not usual. However, where a child is under the age of 13 it is classified as rape under s5 Sexual Offences Act 2003. See section 5.23. ICT-based forms of abuse, section 5.39. Sexually active children and section 5.40. Sexually exploited children.

4.2.8 Sexual abuse includes non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of pornographic materials, watching sexual activities or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.

Most of that could be included verbatim in the school's policy. There's no reason not to. But instead, the school has spent nearly a year revising the policy and has managed to get an absolutely key and central definition so wrong that it is worse than useless, it is positively misleading.

The section of the school's policy on recognising signs of sexual abuse is not much better.

• Sexual knowledge or behaviour that is unusually explicit or inappropriate for the child’s age/stage of development
• Sexual risk taking behaviour including involvement in sexual exploitation/older boyfriend
  Continual, inappropriate or excessive masturbation
• Physical symptoms such as injuries to genital or anal area or bruising, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy
• Unwillingness to undress for sports

Again, the London Child Protection Procedures has it rather better stated, in clauses 4.3.19 to 4.3.24, as follows.

4.3.19 Sexual abuse can be very difficult to recognise and reporting sexual abuse can be an extremely traumatic experience for a child. Therefore both identification and disclosure rates are deceptively low.

4.3.20 Boys and girls of all ages may be sexually abused and are frequently scared to say anything due to guilt and / or fear. According to a recent study three-quarters (72%) of sexually abused children did not tell anyone about the abuse at the time. Twenty-seven percent of the children told someone later, and around a third (31%) still had not told anyone about their experience/s by early adulthood.

4.3.21 If a child makes an allegation of sexual abuse, it is very important that they are taken seriously. Allegations can often initially be indirect as the child tests the professional’s response. There may be no physical signs and indications are likely to be emotional / behavioural.

4.3.22 Behavioural indicators which may help professionals identify child sexual abuse include:

• Inappropriate sexualised conduct;
• Sexually explicit behaviour, play or conversation, inappropriate to the child’s age;
• Contact or non-contact sexually harmful behaviour;
• Continual and inappropriate or excessive masturbation;
• Self-harm (including eating disorder), self mutilation and suicide attempts;
• Involvement in sexual exploitation or indiscriminate choice of sexual partners;
• An anxious unwillingness to remove clothes for e.g. sports events (but this may be related to cultural norms or physical difficulties).

4.3.23 Physical indicators associated with child sexual abuse include:

• Pain or itching of genital area;
• Blood on underclothes;
• Pregnancy in a child;
• Physical symptoms such as injuries to the genital or anal area, bruising to buttocks, abdomen and thighs, sexually transmitted disease, presence of semen on vagina, anus, external genitalia or clothing.

4.3.24 Sex offenders have no common profile, and it is important for professionals to avoid attaching any significance to stereotypes around their background or behaviour. While media interest often focuses on ‘stranger danger’, research indicates that as much as 80 per cent of sexual offending occurs in the context of a known relationship, either family, acquaintance or colleague.

Several things to notice here:

• This is a much more complete list of possible symptoms.
• It starts with warnings about how abuse is difficult to diagnose. 
• It correctly offers alternative possible explanations for an unwillingness to undress for sports - differing cultural norms, or physical difficulties. 
• It puts the percentage of abuse cases where the abuser is known to the victim (included in the definition in the St. Augustine's policy) in the proper context of avoiding stereotypes regarding the background and behaviour of abusers

It is hard to believe that the school has updated its child protection procedures without consulting the Ealing Safeguarding Children Board. And Ealing follows the London Child Protection procedures. So the current version of the London Child Protection procedures ought to be a standard reference for the school when preparing its own procedures. At the website I indicated above, you can even download individual chapters of the document in Word format so that you can quickly and easily copy and paste relevant paragraphs into your own document.

But St. Augustine's hasn't done that. Why not?

So, let's summarise so far. St. Augustine's has a vague and misleading definition of sexual abuse, an incomplete and misleading list of symptoms of sexual abuse, and a reporting procedure that offers far too much wriggle room to the Designated Teacher (i.e. the headmistress, Mrs Gumley Mason) in deciding whether to report allegations or incidents to the LADO.

This policy could hardly be more likely to fail to spot sexual abuse occurring within the school had it been specifically designed with that purpose in mind. And this is the improved policy created in response to the ISI's criticisms. It took them nearly a year to come up with this rubbish.

I know Mrs Gumley Mason reads this blog, so she will have come across my similar criticisms of the definition of sexual abuse and signs of sexual abuse sections of the St. Benedict's child protection policy. The shortcomings in the policies of both schools are eerily similar.

Also eerily similar is both schools' response to the ISI criticisms, to make the most minimal changes to their child protection policy that they felt they could get away with, while leaving themselves as much wriggle room as possible. It took St. Benedict's three attempts before they produced a policy that was sufficiently improved that the DfE and ISI would leave them alone for a bit. The St. Augustine's policy is about the same standard, i.e. still pretty useless. This is not the action of a school which has safeguarding as a high priority.

Why schools should not investigate allegations of abuse

Instead, whenever an allegation or report of abuse arises, a school should always, automatically and immediately forward the report to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection (LADO). It is the LADO who decides whether the report is obviously trivial, or requires some kind of investigation.

The child protection policy of any school should state this clearly. No ifs, buts or wriggle room. Just a straightforward policy that everything gets forwarded, with no attempt at any kind of preliminary investigation by the school.

The reason for this is clearly stated in the St. Augustine's complaint against the ISI.

25. This is of particular relevance because on publication of the Proposed Report the School will come under an obligation to send copies to parents and guardians, many of whom also have children at St. Benedict's. The favourable assessment of St. Benedict's is liable to be compared with the unfavourable assessment of the School.

As this makes clear, independent schools are in competition with each other, and a paedophile scandal is terribly bad for business. If a school does its own investigations (which school staff are not trained for) there is a great temptation to conclude either that nothing really happened, or that the matter can be handled internally without the need to notify outside authorities and risk adverse publicity.

This temptation is compounded if the member of staff under investigation is long-serving or is an old friend of the head teacher. The assumption is that the person under investigation would never do such a thing, and so the investigation is prejudiced from the outset by the preconceptions of the investigator.

So there is a clear conflict of interest if the school tries to investigate cases itself. It is to prevent this conflict of interest that the law requires that the LADO be automatically informed. The LADO is independent both of the school and of the staff member, and moreover is properly trained.

The current Ealing Safeguarding Children Board guidance states on this point

15.2.1 The employer must inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) immediately an allegation is made.

Nice and simple. Clear, succinct and to the point. The current St. Augustine's policy, the one they have spent nearly a year updating following the ISI inspection, says this in clause 8.

When deciding whether to make a referral, following an allegation or suspicion of abuse, the Designated teacher will not make her own decision over what appear to be borderline cases, but rather the doubts and concerns should be discussed with the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). This may be done tentatively and without giving names in the first instance. What appears trivial at first may later be revealed to be much more serious and an allegation of child abuse or neglect may lead to a criminal investigation. Thus the School should not do anything that may jeopardise a police investigation, such as asking a child leading questions or attempting to investigate the allegation of abuse.

So many words! So much wriggle room! That paragraph should simply say this.

The Designated teacher must immediately inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) of a suspicion or allegation.of abuse.

So, nearly a year after St. Augustine's was inspected and told that its child protection policy was illegal on this specific point, the school still hasn't got this right. It's not even as if it is terribly hard to do the right thing here. Why go to such lengths to get such a simple matter wrong?

Analysis of the complaint

Reading the Statement of Grounds of the case made by St. Augustine's against the ISI allows us to draw some very interesting conclusions.

Although both Mrs Gumley Mason and the school solicitors Elliot Bond & Bradbury have reportedly been saying that the case had nothing to do with safeguarding, it clearly did. Paragraph 7 and 8 of the Statement clearly describe what they were complaining about.

7. The Proposed Report states that the inspectors concluded that at the time of the initial inspection the School failed to comply fully with the regulatory requirements because, inter alia:

(1) the School failed to ensure that any persons whose services were no longer used because they were considered unsuitable to work with children were always reported fully to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month of leaving the School;

(2) the School failed to ensure that appropriate checks and central register entries were made, an alleged failure which was said to include failing to ensure that enhanced Criminal Records Bureau ("CRB") checks were always obtained and recorded for a governor as necessary.

8. The Proposed Report further states, having regard to those conclusions, that:

(1) the School's arrangements for welfare, health and safety are inadequate;

(2) the child protection policy is unsatisfactory overall and at the initial inspection significant failures in referral practice were identified;

(3) governance of the school is unsatisfactory overall because it does not monitor closely enough the School's arrangements for safeguarding;

(4) leadership and management of the educational aspects of the School are mostly good but weaknesses in safeguarding practice make them unsatisfactory overall.

All these criticisms are still in the published version of the report. So the legal action and any associated complaints to the ISI appear to have achieved little or nothing except for a delay of at least 4 months.

I say "at least" 4 months because we know that the ISI was about to publish the report on 2nd November 2010, but we don't know by how much the report had already been delayed as a result of earlier complaints from the school.


There are two possible explanations I can think of for the school deciding on legal action against the ISI.

One possibility is that the school genuinely believed that the criticisms of the ISI were unfair and not factually based. The other possibility is that they did realise that the detailed criticisms were fair and were just trying it on. I have no doubt that in the correspondence between the school and the ISI, the ISI will have provided a detailed justification for its conclusions. It is a great pity that the ISI does not publish those detailed justifications, as it would illuminate the situation most effectively.

Let's consider the first possibility - that the school originally thought the criticism was unfounded. There is a standard procedure the ISI follows for all inspections, where a draft of the report is provided to the school and the school has the opportunity to comment prior to publication. There is also a complaints procedure, in three stages. I have no doubt that the school activated the complaints procedure at least to Stage 1 and will have received a detailed description of the facts on which the ISI based its conclusions.

The legal action has been stood down and the report now published, complete with all the criticisms which the school originally complained about. Therefore we can only conclude that if the school genuinely did believe that the ISI had its facts wrong, the school no longer believes this. Also, if this scenario is true, we can conclude that at the time of the inspection, the school's management (specifically Mrs Gumley Mason and the Governors and Trustees) didn't know what was going on in their own school, and were genuinely surprised by what the ISI uncovered. Not a very good advert for the quality of management. Gross incompetence is about the kindest description that could be given to this situation.

The second possibility is rather darker - that the school realised that the ISI's facts were substantially correct, but decided to complain anyway in order to try and get the report suppressed or at least watered down. The school does have a motivation for trying it on in this way. I can do no better in describing that motivation than to quote the school's own words in the complaint itself.

25. This is of particular relevance because on publication of the Proposed Report the School will come under an obligation to send copies to parents and guardians, many of whom also have children at St. Benedict's. The favourable assessment of St. Benedict's is liable to be compared with the unfavourable assessment of the School.

There you have it. St. Augustine's is in competition with other independent schools for pupils, and for the fee income that those pupils produce. Favourable ISI reports are major marketing tools, they are trumpeted in the local press and quotes from them are liberally scattered through school prospectuses. And St. Augustine's, being specifically a Catholic independent school, is especially in competition with St. Benedict's, since St. Benedict's is Catholic, co-educational and located less than a mile away. St. Augustine's was undoubtedly hoping to recruit some of the girls currently at St. Benedict's whose parents are concerned about the child protection failings at St. Benedict's. But an ISI report stating that there are also serious safeguarding shortcomings at St. Augustine's puts the kybosh on that strategy.

So, in this scenario, to resuscitate that strategy and maintain the competitiveness of the school, the management could have decided to complain and see if they could get the ISI report withdrawn or its conclusions watered down into meaninglessness. In the circumstances, that's not a bad strategy to follow. The ISI might have capitulated - there was no way of knowing if they would unless they tried. And even if they didn't, it might be that the process could be strung out for long enough that some pupils at least would come over before the report appeared. It would be interesting to learn how many pupils have transferred from St. Benedict's over the last year or so.

But in this scenario, there are dangers involved. One was that the ISI would stand firm - as it seems that they have. That means that the issue of the safeguarding shortcomings is compounded by the the delay in informing parents, which is clearly the sole responsibility of the school.

But even that might have not been a fatal problem, since ISI reports and especially their criticisms are couched in a language that takes a bit of decoding. It might be that parents wouldn't have realised the seriousness of the criticisms, especially if the language could have been watered down a bit.

At the time the legal action was taken out, I had written no articles about St. Augustine's. I'm sure Mrs Gumley Mason was aware of the blog and aware of the hard time that St. Benedict's was getting. At the beginning of November, Pearce and Maestri had been arrested but not yet charged, St. Benedict's had recently (and somewhat belatedly) distributed the ISI Supplementary Report to parents, and Mr Cleugh and the Abbot had had a torrid time in the parents' meeting called to discuss the report. All very satisfactory in terms of the relative reputation of St. Augustine's. It wasn't until the end of November that I published my first article on St. Augustine's wondering where their ISI report had disappeared to, and speculated that there might be a safeguarding problem, a speculation which has turned out to be all too well founded.

I'll leave it to you to decide. Did St. Augustine's originally think they had been hard done by in the ISI report, or did they realise from the outset that the ISI criticisms were valid? I don't know. Perhaps somebody would like to ask Mrs Gumley Mason.

My quote to the Gazette

Ealing Gazette contacted me with questions about St. Augustine's since they know of my interest. I provided a quote for publication, but they didn't use it all. Here is the full quote, unedited.

Based on what is in the ISI report, St Augustine's has been breaking the law on child protection for years. They employed teachers before their CRB checks had been done. Anybody could have been working there. 

They didn't report staff to the Independent Safeguarding Authority who left because they were unsuitable to supervise children, so abusive teachers might have gone on to other teaching jobs.

The child protection policy didn't even ensure that all allegations of abuse are reported to the authorities so that they could be properly investigated. 

These are really serious and basic child protection failures. Similar failures at St. Benedict's have resulted in child sexual abuse there lasting for a long time, even after a former teacher had been sent to jail for abuse. 

We have no way of knowing if children at St. Augustine's have been abused and it has gone unreported. It's outrageous that the school tried to stop publication of the report and keep parents in the dark about all this. Their priority is obviously protecting the school's reputation rather than keeping children safe.

St. Augustine's complaint against the ISI

Many court documents can be obtained by members of the public. And I have done so in the case of the complaint by St. Augustine's School against the ISI. There are all sorts of other ways of obtaining information as well, for instance through the Freedom of Information Act. It isn't hard once you know how.

So that nobody can accuse me of selective quotation from it, I'm publishing in full the Statement of Grounds, essentially the facts behind the complaint as claimed by the school. This is a public domain document, I have every right to publish it.

In what has been provided below, I have made just a single change from the wording of the document as provide to the court. The Statement of Grounds names two teachers who have left the school. These are the two teachers who, according to the ISI, should have been reported to the ISA on their departure. I've removed their names and called them "[Teacher A]" and "[Teacher B]" instead.

I have the original document and am happy to provide a copy to any parent on request, so that you can see for yourself that the wording is accurate except for these two changes.

In future articles, I will provide a commentary on what this all means. But read this all first.

=====================

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

BETWEEN:

THE QUEEN ON THE APPLICATION OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S PRIORY SCHOOL LIMITED Claimant

- and-

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS INSPECTORATE Defendant

STATEMENT OF GROUNDS

Summary

1. St. Augustine's Priory School Limited is a registered charity which operates an independent Catholic day school for girls under the name St. Augustine's Priory (''the School").

2. The Independent Schools Inspectorate ("ISI") is a body approved by the Secretary of State for Education under section 163 of the Education Act 2002 (as originally enacted) for the purpose of conducting inspections of independent schools and making reports on such schools.

3. ISI conducted an inspection of the School on 23rd and 24th March and 4th to 6th May 2010 and concluded inter alia, in a report ("the Proposed Report") intended to be published on 2nd November 2010 pursuant to the provisions of the applicable inspection framework, that the quality of governance, leadership and managements, whilst good in some aspects, is unsatisfactory overall because it has not ensured that safeguarding procedures and practice meet the required standards.

4. The School objects to that judgment on the grounds that it is based on errors of fact and law, is unfairly inconsistent with other reports and is a judgment which no reasonable inspecting body could have reached.

5. The School accordingly seeks orders directing ISI to reconsider the terms of the Proposed Report. On 1st November 2010 the School obtained an interim Order from Mr. Justice Butterfield restraining publication until trial of this claim or further order.

The facts

6. In the course of the initial inspection on 23rd and 24th March 2010, the inspectors, led by Mrs. Culligan, the reporting inspector, assessed whether the School complied with the requirements set out in the Education (Independent Schools Standards) (England) regulations 2003, S.I. 2003 No. 1910, as amended ("the regulatory requirements").

7. The Proposed Report states that the inspectors concluded that at the time of the initial inspection the School failed to comply fully with the regulatory requirements because, inter alia:

(1) the School failed to ensure that any persons whose services were no longer used because they were considered unsuitable to work with children were always reported fully to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month of leaving the School;

(2) the School failed to ensure that appropriate checks and central register entries were made, an alleged failure which was said to include failing to ensure that enhanced Criminal Records Bureau ("CRB") checks were always obtained and recorded for a governor as necessary.

8. The Proposed Report further states, having regard to those conclusions, that:

(1) the School's arrangements for welfare, health and safety are inadequate;

(2) the child protection policy is unsatisfactory overall and at the initial inspection significant failures in referral practice were identified;

(3) governance of the school is unsatisfactory overall because it does not monitor closely enough the School's arrangements for safeguarding;

(4) leadership and management of the educational aspects of the School are mostly good but weaknesses in safeguarding practice make them unsatisfactory overall.

9. The Proposed Report therefore sets out in one of the three paragraphs recording the inspector's main findings that the quality of governance, leadership and management, whilst good in some aspects, notably in supporting high attainment and excellent personal development, is unsatisfactory overall because it has not ensured that safeguarding procedures and practice meet the required standard.

Referrals

10. The concerns expressed to the headmistress of the School, Mrs. Frances Gumley-Mason ("the Headmistress") by Mrs. Culligan at the time of the initial inspection as to failure always to make full referrals to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month related to (a) [Teacher A] (b) [Teacher B] (c) Father Gregory Chillman.

11. [Teacher A] was employed at the School from 1st September 2007, was suspended from 7th February 2008 (at which time she was already on sick leave) and her employment ended on 31st May 2008. The suspension was imposed on the ground that [Teacher A]'s CRB disclosure contained information relating to her husband and son which she said was inaccurate and was pending an amended disclosure. The Headmistress decided that under the statutory and guidance provisions then applicable referral was not required or appropriate. After speaking to Mrs. Culligan, the Headmistress made inquiries of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and was informed that [Teacher A] was "definitely not referral material". The Headmistress subsequently informed Mrs. Culligan of this.

12. [Teacher B] was employed at the School from 1st September 2007 and was suspended on 3rd December 2008 following written complaints from two groups of sixth form pupils on 1st and 3rd December 2008. He responded to the complaints by e-mail received on 5th December 2008 and subsequently, having sought advice from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, resigned on 18th December 2008. The Headmistress decided that under the statutory and guidance provisions then applicable referral was not required or appropriate.

After speaking to Mrs. Culligan, the Headmistress made inquiries of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and was informed that it was "up to her" whether or not she made a referral in respect of [Teacher B]. The Headmistress decided in all the circumstances to do so. The Headmistress subsequently informed Mrs. Culligan of these matters.

13. For many years Father Gregory Chillman was the School's chaplain and a governor. The appointment to the office of chaplain was made not by the School but by the Abbot of St. Benedict's Abbey, a monastic foundation connected with St. Benedict's School, a nearby Catholic school originally for boys which has recently become co-educational. At the time of the initial visit the School was aware of one allegation only relating to Father Gregory's conduct at the School, involving a conversation in January 2004 with two sixth form students in the sixth form common room in the presence of other students. No complaint was made by the students involved in the conversation themselves. On investigation by the Headmistress it appeared that Father Gregory had made an ill-judged remark and it was agreed that he should receive further training on child protection issues. The Headmistress decided that under the statutory and guidance provisions then applicable referral was not required or appropriate.

14. At about the same time the School became aware of an allegation of historic abuse, taking place in the 1970s, newly made by a former male pupil of St. Benedict's against Father Gregory. The School had no knowledge of this matter, save that the allegation had been made. The School was advised by the relevant local authority, the London Borough of Ealing, on 10th April 2010 that there was no reason to be concerned for the safety of students at the School.

15. The Headmistress informed Mrs. Culligan of these matters. Further, the Headmistress has been advised by both the Independent Safeguarding Authority and by the London Borough of Ealing that since Father Gregory has never been employed by the School it is not for the School to make any referral.

16. In those circumstances, the School contends that:

(1) there has been no failure on its part to ensure that any persons whose services are no longer used because they are considered unsuitable to work with children are always reported fully to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month of leaving the School;

(2) there have been no cases in which the School has been obliged to make a referral to the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

CRB and other checks

17. The regulatory requirements were amended with effect from 1st May 2007 to require schools to keep a central register recording checks made on staff and proprietors and amending the requirements as to who should be checked and in what manner.

18. Mrs. Culligan required the School to obtain an enhanced CRB disclosure in respect of a governor, Brigadier Cantley, although he was appointed a governor before 1st May 2007 and thus before such a requirement applied to governors who were not the chair of the governing body.

19. Mrs. Culligan criticised the checking procedures undertaken in relation to [Teacher A] although:

(1) the regulatory requirements did not oblige the School to obtain a CRB disclosure in respect of a person (such as [Teacher A]) who had worked in a school in England in a position bringing her regularly into contact with children or young persons during a period ending not more than three months before the date of appointment;

(2) the School had obtained references in respect of [Teacher A] from her previous school stating that there was no reason why she should not work with children and that CRB checks had been undertaken prior to her previous appointment;

(3) the School itself (consistently with the applicable regulatory requirements if a CRB disclosure was required) appointed her for a probationary period subject to CRB checks which were applied for on 18th May 2007. The regulatory requirement was to obtain a disclosure before or as soon as practicable after appointment;

(4) although no disclosure document was produced for [Teacher A] until December 2007, that delay was outside the School's control.

20. In those circumstances, the School contends that standards which are erroneous in law have been applied in determining whether or not the School complied with the regulatory requirements relating to CRB and other checks.

Unfair inconsistency

21. It is demonstrable from other reports on the Defendant's web site that on an initial inspection visit schools are frequently found to have failed in complying with the regulatory requirements in some respects. Typically, where such errors are comparatively minor and improved procedures for the avoidance of such errors in future have been instituted, the failures and the improved procedures are both noted and there is no main finding which adversely reflects on the governance, leadership and management of the school.

22. The report on the School departs from this pattern, despite the inspectors' finding that the governors had identified a number of specific and appropriate procedures to be put into action with immediate effect and the further fact that Mrs. Culligan informed the School that its amended child protection policy was "watertight". The School is thus at a loss to know what more is still required.

23. The tenor of the report is to treat regulatory failures as continuing (as shown by the terms of paragraph 8 above) instead of as having been remedied (as illustrated by the matters set out in paragraph 22 above).

24. St. Benedict's itself was inspected by the Defendant in November 2009 and received a favourable report in respect of its child protection policies. It was reinspected in April and May 2010 because a member of the public had drawn the Defendant's attention to public records of six prosecutions or civil actions brought in connection with the Abbey and St. Benedict's School. On reinspection the Defendant recorded a number of failings in St. Benedict's approach to safeguarding and expressed the judgment that the governors' commitment to St. Benedict's rule of love and forgiveness "appears on occasion to have overshadowed responsibility for children's welfare". Notwithstanding that criticism, there was no revision of the overall assessment of governance as good and leadership as excellent.

25. This is of particular relevance because on publication of the Proposed Report the School will come under an obligation to send copies to parents and guardians, many of whom also have children at St. Benedict's. The favourable assessment of St. Benedict's is liable to be compared with the unfavourable assessment of the School.

Legal basis of challenge

26. The School respectfully submits that the Defendant is amenable to judicial review because in inspecting schools it is carrying out a statutory function in the public interest on behalf of the Department for Education under the terms of an agreement with that Department. Its reports are published on its web site and supplied to the Department and are available to be read by any member of the public. A principal purpose of the reports is to determine whether an independent school is satisfying the statutorily prescribed standards for independent schools in England.

27. It is the School's case that:

(1) the Defendant's conclusions as to the School's compliance at the initial visit with the regulatory requirements relating to safeguarding are based on errors of fact and law in relation to referral and checking obligations and cannot be supported;

(2) the Defendant's conclusions as to the School's continuing failures to comply with the regulatory requirements (it as the Proposed Report appears to imply, it is alleged that there are continuing failures) are based on no material and are contrary to statements made to the School by the Defendant;

(3) the Defendant's conclusions as to the governance, leadership and management of the School are unfairly inconsistent with the conclusions reached in other cases and as such are in breach of the Defendant's own guidelines for preparing reports;

(4) having regard to all the matters set out above, the conclusions reached as to the governance, leadership and management of the School are conclusions which no reasonable body of inspectors could have reached.

28. In the premises, the Defendant should be directed to reconsider the terms of the Proposed Report in the light of the matters set out above.

St. Augustine's in the Gazette

You might care to buy a copy of today's Ealing Gazette. There is an article about St. Augustine's on page 7. The headline is

School 'failed to protect children from abuse risks'
Ealing: Inspectors highlight number of concerns

The article briefly but accurately summarises ths issues of the ISI report, and quotes from it, pointing out the failings in CRB checks, the failure to make the proper reports to the Independent Safeguarding Authority and Ealing Social Services, the fact that the school's child protection policy didn't meet legal requirements.

There is a quote from Mrs. Gumley-Mason at the end of the report, as follows.

Headteacher Mrs Gumley-Mason said: "The report is out in the public domain and nothing has been suppressed."

"Of the three people mentioned, two are retired and as far as I know the other is no longer in the teaching profession or indeed in this country."

That bit about "nothing has been suppressed" is a lie. Last November, on the eve of the scheduled publication of the ISI Report, the school took out an injunction against the ISI to prevent publication, seeking judicial review in the High Court of the decision. So of course the report has been suppressed. It has been suppressed for four months. It is just that the school has been unable to suppress it for any longer.

In its submission to the court, the school claimed that the ISI's report "is based on errors of fact and law, is unfairly inconsistent with other reports and is a judgment which no reasonable inspecting body could have reached".

To claim that a judgment is not "reasonable" is a very strong claim. This is legal jargon for saying that no unbiased person with two brain cells to rub together could possibly have reached the same conclusions. In other words, the school was alleging that the ISI was either grossly incompetent or biased. They don't say which.

As for "the three people mentioned", one is the former chaplain and chairman of governors, not named in the Gazette but whom we all know is Father Gregory Chillman, and two are former teachers. Their current status does not reduce one bit the school's obligations to send referrals to the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). If one of the teachers is no longer in the teaching profession, this is no thanks to Mrs Gumley-Mason, because this should have been ensured by her sending the proper report to the ISA.

Organising parents

This article is directed specifically at parents of pupils at St Augustine's.

As you can see from the ISI report, there have been severe problems with safeguarding at St. Augustine's school. And as you can also see from Mrs. Gumley Mason's covering letter and subsequent silence, it seems that there is not going to be any voluntary movement by the school on this issue.

So, if anything is going to be done, you are going to have to initiate it yourselves and apply some pressure. I suspect that you're going to have to meet and form a group. If you're in a group, bullying tactics can't work against you - you can't be picked off one by one. As for the possibility of retribution against your daughters, it is worth nothing that most people, including an overwhelming majority of teachers, have a sense of profound disgust at the idea of somebody deliberately harming children. As a result, I think you may find that a significant proportion of the staff are very sympathetic and would do their best to see to it that no retribution can occur, and will passively or actively cooperate in seeing to it that there are improvements.


So, what can you do, and what should you do? I'm not the person to tell you what you should do. It is your daughters' education and safety we are speaking of, not mine. You are the ones having to evaluate the risk.

I'm going to carry on doing some research as to what has been going on. I hope you will find that helpful. But I can't change anything directly. I have no standing with the school, for instance, I can't storm the headmistress' office and demand changes. But you can.

So, you almost certainly need to form a group if anything is going to be done. Then you will need to decide together what you want. It needs to be reasonably practical, and it needs of course to be something the school can legally deliver.

After that, you will need to decide how you are going to try and achieve it.

I'm sure there are some among you with legal experience and the ability to do research. I don't doubt that some of you have some degree of campaigning experience, either in local politics or in other kinds of campaigns. You are an educated bunch, wise in the ways of the world, and clearly wanting your children to have a good education so that they can achieve things and enjoy all that life has to offer.

If you decide that changes need to be made, then you have the means and the power to achieve this, if you decide it is important enough to put in the effort and start acting together. I'm very happy to offer ideas and suggestions if requested, but it is not my place to organise this. Start phoning and emailing each other.

Since Carlile isn't reporting for now...

Since Lord Carlile's report and its recommendations aren't going to see the light of day for a good long time yet, I think it would be a good idea to have a think about what his recommendations ought to be. I made some suggestions to Lord Carlile as to what recommendations should be in his report. Since we won't know for months yet whether he has accepted them, I'm going put them here instead.

Although these recommendations are directed at St. Benedict's, the procedural failings in safeguarding at St. Augustine's are very similar, so parents of children at both schools might be interested.

Here is the first recommendation

The Child Protection Policy for the school shall be replaced entirely with one based on a model policy implementing best practice and complying fully with the recommendations of the London Safeguarding Children Board.

There are safeguarding experts around who could help produce such a policy. I provided Lord Carlile with suggestions as to suitable sources of knowledge and expertise. Unless there is a clear written policy that describes an effective safeguarding regime, no other improvements are remotely likely to happen.

One key point of any safeguarding policy is that it must clearly state that all allegations or incidents of abuse must immediately be reported to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection (LADO). It is the LADO's decision, not the school's, as to whether an allegation merits a formal investigation or even a referral to the police for a possible criminal investigation. If you see any wriggle room on referring allegations to the LADO, any at all, then the chances are both that the policy is seriously defective in other ways and the mindset of those writing it is concerned more with protection of the reputation of the school and the teachers rather than ensuring the welfare of the pupils.

The school's published policy is still the inadequate one published in Septamber 2010. The school shouldn't need to wait on Lord Carlile in order to be getting on with this.

This recommendation is easy and blindingly obvious. That isn’t to say that a well-written safeguarding policy is all that is needed. This is a first step. Other measures are also required. I'll come to those in future articles.

Mrs Gumley Mason's response to the ISI Report

There is something magnificently petty and small-minded about Mrs Gumley Mason's first public response to the publication of the ISI report.

Was it to call a staff meeting to discuss the report? Apparently not.

Was it to announce a parents' meeting at which parents could ask questions? No sign of it.

What appears to be the first response since sending out the report to parents (as she was legally obliged to do) is to bar links from this blog to the school website.

Today, I tried clicking a link from my previous article to where the ISI Report is published on the school website. Imagine my surprise when I found myself not at the ISI report but instead with the following page.

You are trying to access from a non-authorized domain. (scepticalthoughts.blogspot.com)

So, Mrs Gumley Mason's first response has been to try and bar links from this blog to the school website. It hasn't even been competently done. Immediately below the notice is a link to the very page I was trying to provide access to!

Against the possibility that she does get her webmaster to implement the block more effectively, let me tell you how to get round it. In future, when making links to the school website, I will provide the link directly, and provide the address of the link in text, like this. Here is the link, and here is the address of the link. http://www.saintaugustinespriory.org.uk/index.php/component/docman/doc_download/12-Latest_ISI_Report

Copy the link address, paste it into the address bar at the top of your browser and then press Enter. If you use that method then there is no tag sent to the website indicating that you have been directed there from here, and you will get through unhindered. For as long as the attempt at blocking this blog remains in place, I will provide links in both forms, and will explain why I'm doing it that way. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why the block has been implemented.

ISI Report for St. Augustine's published

The ISI report for St. Augustine's school has now been published on the school website. I see that Mrs Gumley Mason is following the time-honoured tactic of burying bad news in the most inaccessible place she feels she can get away with. It requires that you follow three hyperlinks in succession to get to where the report actually is, and the text announcing the content of the link is really rather small.

Can you easily read this?

7.5pt Georgia is not the most readable typeface in the world, especially with underlining and inadequate paragraph spacing. The link is also not in the location you would expect it to be. Under the title "Inspection Report" in the News menu on the home page you don't find the ISI report at all. The report you find there is Deacon Anthony Clark's gushathon. The only link to the ISI report is in that list of miscellaneous news.

I expect the report also to be published on the ISI website early next week. This delay is routine, the ISI gives a school 2 weeks to distribute the report to parents before it is made available to the general public from its own website.

It's also slightly curious that the report is described as the "latest" ISI report. The school has only recently joined the Independent Schools Council, and so this is the first ISI inspection of the school. Previous inspections were conducted by OFSTED.

Finally, here is a bit from section 5.2 of the report, concerning safe recruitment practices.

Several individuals had started work before their CRB certificates had been received, although these were eventually obtained as required. These individuals were not recorded as having a previous CRB check or List 99 clearance and supervision, and a few other checks were not complete. In a very small number of cases the recorded delay in checking was lengthy.

Unfortunately, the ISI doesn't indicate what it means by "lengthy", whether they mean days, weeks, months or years. This is one of the major shortcomings of the way the ISI writes its reports. They could perfectly well have included something like "The longest delay between stating work and completion of CRB and List 99 checks was x months". But they haven't. You as parents are left blundering around in a fog wondering how long they mean by "lengthy."

Even before CRB checks cam into force 10 years or so ago, the Department for Education maintained what is known as "List 99", a list of people barred from working with children. When a notification is sent by the school to the DfE (or since 2009 to the Independent Safeguarding Authority), if appropriate the person's name is added to List 99. The Times has a good description of how List 99 works, and how and why people are added to it. From my knowledge of ISI reports and those of friends, I think the ISI wouldn't have said "lengthy" unless the delay was at least six months in one or more cases. But I emphasise that is an educated guess, nothing more.

As you can see from the Times article, List 99 has has been in existence for over 80 years, and even before CRB checks came in, it has been necessary for schools to carry out List 99 checks on new staff. So the school doesn't have the excuse of not knowing that the requirements existed. They have been in place for almost as long as the school has existed in Ealing.

The Headmaster's Letter

The letter sent by the headmaster about the delay to the Carlile report has some interesting language in it. This sentence in particular.

David Pearce, a monk of Ealing Abbey and a former teacher at St. Benedict's School, is to stand trial on 4th July 2011, for alleged historical offences committed during his time at the school.

There are three things which strike me about that sentence.

First, the headmaster has started to distance Pearce from the Abbey by omitting his full clerical title. He is Father David Pearce and remains so unless and until he is removed from the priesthood.

Second, the headmaster has made no mention of John Maestri, Pearce's co-defendent in the forthcoming trial, who also was a teacher at St. Benedict's School at the time the alleged offences were committed.

And third, the headmaster has sought to minimise the case by committing the insult of calling it "historical" abuse. A murder committed some years ago is not described as an "historical" murder, it is still a murder, and is treated as being just as serious as if it had been committed last week. This habit of uniquely describing older child abuse cases as "historical" is an insult to the victims who suffer the effects to this day. It is anything but historical for them.

It seems that the headmaster would very much like the abuse to be consigned to history and not be considered to have any current relevance, but that is just not going to wash. It is the failings of the policies, procedures and overall institutional culture of the school which has permitted the abuses to go on for so long, and unless and until it can be shown that the policies and the culture have comprehensively changed, then this issue will remain very current.

They knew Carlile would be delayed

At the time the Carlile inquiry was announced in mid-September, it was already known that Pearce and Maestri had been arrested the month before.

The school's solicitor Tony Nelson was and is representing David Pearce. He would have attended police interviews and would have had a decent idea as to whether charges were likely. And in fact charges did follow in November.

But no mention was made by the Abbot or Headmaster as to the possibility of delays in the report from this cause at the safeguarding meeting. And there was no mention by anybody connected with the school of the possibility that the criminal prosecution of Pearce and Maestri might delay the report when they were in fact charged in November.

And there wasn't even any mention of the possibility of delays from this cause in the article in the Headmaster's Newsletter in February this year.

Tony Nelson must have known from the outset of the possibility that the report could compromise the trial. He's in the best possible position to know, since he commissioned Lord Carlile to carry out the inquiry and is representing David Pearce.

It must have also been pretty clear to Lord Carlile that charges were likely in the case of those who had already been arrested. In email exchanges I had with Lord Carlile before I met him in connection with the inquiry, he made it a condition of the meeting that it be kept confidential until after the report had been published. I pointed out that if publication were cancelled or unreasonably delayed, then that would put a obligation on me to keep the meeting secret for ever, which was not something I was prepared to accept. He eventually agreed that in the event of a substantial delay, I would be free to publish my own account, but he adamantly refused to put any kind of duration on what he meant by "substantial".

From our exchange of emails it is completely clear that even at the end of September Carlile was anticipating the possibility of a significant delay. He would have been most remiss in not advising his client accordingly, and I can only reasonably assume that he did give that advice. So the Abbot and the headmaster knew right from the start that the original estimates they gave of publication dates were wildly unrealistic. And even though Carlile knew that the publication dates being given out were unrealistic, he stuck to his cutoff dates for the Call for Evidence, as if the report were not going to be delayed.

But if the Abbot and Headmaster had told the parents at the meeting in September that the report would probably not be published for almost a year, tempers were running so high that there might have been a serious revolt amongst the parents. Doing nothing for a year is just not an acceptable response to a situation this serious. Doing nothing for a year while you are promising action somewhat faster is just plain lying. There is no better word for it. The evidence very much points to the conclusion that the Abbot and Headmaster have been lying to you. And remember that they delayed sending out the ISI Supplementary Report to parents until the school fees were safely in for the autumn term.

I'll leave it to you to decide how serious they are about making changes to the school.

Carlile Report delayed as predicted

As I predicted last month, publication of the Carlile report is being delayed. And the reason I stated is the one which has in fact been given.

The school has put a notice up on its website. The reason given for the delay is the need to avoid disrupting the forthcoming trial of Father David Pearce and John Maestri, on three charges each of indecent assault against a boy.

Let's get some dates sorted here. The trial of Pearce and Maestri is scheduled to start on 4th July and last for 4 days. If a conviction is obtained, there will almost certainly be an adjournment for sentencing, that is normally about 6 weeks. So sentencing would be sometime in mid-August.

But Pearce and Maestri aren't the only former priests and teachers against whom prosecutions might occur. Abbot Lawrence Soper was required to return to the UK and answer police questions.

And in the ISI Supplementary report on St. Benedict's, there is the the following item

(i) Legal action has been initiated in connection with a previous member of the religious community

I still don't yet know who that is. It isn't Pearce, Hobbs, Chillman or Soper, it is somebody else. And I don't know where the legal action has got to, but if it is or becomes a criminal prosecution, that's another trial that may occur.

So there are potentially a number of overlapping prosecutions that may yet happen. If a pending prosecution is a justification for delaying the report, it may be delayed for a lot longer than is currently anticipated.

But even with a publication date during the summer holidays, there is zero chance of any of Lord Carlile's recommendations being implemented before the end of this academic year. So for instance we are likely to have the current travesty of a child protection policy remaining in force for some time yet.

Remember, at the Safeguarding meeting held last September, Cleugh and Shipperlee seemed to try to express two mutually contradictory positions. First they claimed that all the abuse was "historical" and that there was no risk to current pupils. And at the same time they were claiming that the matter was so serious that it required that they get a Lord and a QC to come and make an inquiry about it.

And since then there has been a deafening silence on what improvements they consider might be needed in terms of their safeguarding policies and procedures. And now the Carlile report is delayed pending the Pearce and Maestri trial. There is nothing in the headmasters' letter which suggests any kind of interim publication which would enable the school to get on with taking measures to improve things.

There just doesn't seem to be any great urgency to do anything.

So if you are wondering whether to keep your child there next year (or even to start sending your child there in September), you can't count on any improvements having been made by the time the autumn term starts. You will be sending your children to a school where where there is a history of child abuse and where the current child protection policy is inadequate.

Parents, are you satisfied with this state of affairs? If you aren't, you need to get together and start deciding to do something about it. The school isn't going to help you. The ISI feels it has done its job in issuing the report and it thinks it is the DfE's job to insist on remedial action. And the DfE appears to be intensively engaged in looking the other way as hard as it can. You're on your own.

Questions for Mrs Gumley Mason

If you are a parent of a child at St. Augustine's, here are some questions which you may be interested in learning about. They are all questions which Mrs. Gumley Mason knows or at least ought to know the answers to.

• When was the first draft of the ISI report provided to the school?
• What modifications have been made relative to this draft in the final version?
• What explanations did the ISI give for any changes made?
• Did the school take legal action against the ISI?
• What was the purpose of the legal action?
• How much has been spent on this legal action, in costs, court fees and fees to the school's own solicitors?
• How much of the headmistress's time has been spent on matters connected with the legal action?
• Who made the decision to proceed with legal action?
• When was the decision made?
• Was the decision formally approved at a meeting of the Governors? If so, when?
• Was the decision formally approved at a meeting of the Trustees? If so, when?
• When was the action started?
• What aspect(s) of the ISI report did the school object to?
• Has the action been withdrawn? If so, when and why?
• Does the school have any reason now to criticise the ISI's approach or anything in the content of the report?
• Who is the new "independent governor" who has been appointed?
• Was he known to the headmistress, any other members of staff or any governors or trustees prior to the search to appoint a new governor being started? If so, what is his connection with the person or persons concerned?
• What version of the safeguarding policy was in force at the time of the OFSTED inspection in 2006?
• Did it share any of the weaknesses recently criticised by the ISI?
• For how long has the Central Register of Appointments not been properly maintained?
• How many staff have been permitted to supervise children before their CRB checks were completed?
• What is the longest period that a member of staff was permitted to supervise children before the CRB check was received?
• What were the allegations against the two members of staff whom the ISI stated should have been referred to the ISA on their departure?
• Have those referrals now been made?
• Have referrals of anybody else been made to the ISA (or prior to 2009 to the Teacher Misconduct Section of the DfE) within the last 10 years up to the present day?
• Are any referrals to the ISA currently being prepared or expected to be sent in the near future?
• Have there been any incidents or allegations made against any current members of staff, governors or trustees, which if the present requirement to report all such allegations automatically to the LADO had been in place should have been so reported? If so, how many and will they now be reported to the LADO?
• At the school, have there been any incidents involving or allegations made against Father Gregory Chillman, relating to his suitability to supervise children? If so, what are they, and what was done in response?
• When did Father Gregory Chillman resign as chaplain and Chairman of Governors? Why?

If you ask any of these questions, then I would be very interested to learn what the replies are. Even a refusal to reply will be most illuminating.

Mrs Gumley Mason, I know you read this blog. Perhaps you would care to set the record straight by writing a further letter to parents clearly setting out your answers to these questions.

Spin

The letter to parents accompanying the ISI report on St. Augustine's was a wonder to behold. It was loaded with enough spin to make Graeme Swann want to come over and take lessons.

The first thing the headmistress did was to provide lots of nice little quotes about how wonderful the girls are. That is bound to create a nice warm impression with the parents - everybody likes to hear compliments directed towards their children.

Then she nicely conflated the Diocesan report with ISI report. The Diocesan report was published back in September. The only reason it was provided with the ISI report now was because the headmistress knew perfectly well how gruesome the ISI report would be, and needed a good report to balance it out.

I have to say that you can put no weight on the Diocesan report at all. Deacon Anthony Clark, the diocesan inspector, also recently inspected St. Benedict's School, and his reports on both the Senior School and the Junior School were just as gushing as his St. Augustine's report, even though they were carried out in July and December 2010, after the the problems of St. Benedict's had hit the national press, and even though Peter Turner, the diocesan safeguarding adviser, had known about the safeguarding shortcomings at St. Benedict's for several years prior to the inspection visit.

Now, I accept that the diocesan report is not supposed to be about safeguarding. It addresses the teaching of religious education and the extent to which the ethos of the school reflects that of the sponsoring religion.But it occurs to me that the ethos of a religion is communicated in part at least through the effectiveness by which its adherents live and act according to their religious principles. And a school which has shown to be as cavalier as St. Benedict's over the safety and welfare of its pupils surely merits some mention of the fact in the diocesan report? But there is none. So as far as I'm concerned, Deacon Anthony Clark's report deserves to be filed in the bin. Distributing it to parents was a waste of some perfectly good trees.

But the real masterpiece of the letter was how the headmistress minimised the criticisms in the ISI report. Here is the relevant paragraph.

Naturally no organisation is perfect. We continue to battle to keep up with our ever expanding use of ICT. Our Central Register of Appointments has been revamped and is now a thing of bureaucratic beauty. Our Child Protection (Safeguarding) Policy, revised at the time of the ISI inspection, has been completely re-written and is now, I hope, more user-friendly. In addition our Child Protection Committee has added three single page procedural flowcharts, providing readers with an instant over-view of steps to be taken. These will be reviewed each year to keep up with changing legislation. These policies and procedures can be viewed on our website or copies can be requested from the school office.

"Naturally no organisation is perfect". A very nice way of gliding over the fact that the school has been found to have been persistently breaking the law.

The first point she made, and the only real admission of any shortcoming, was to do with the struggle to use ICT effectively.

After that, she's congratulating herself at every opportunity. "Our Central Register of Appointments has been revamped and is now a thing of bureaucratic beauty" carefully avoids making any mention of the reason it had to be revamped. If you read the report, you learn that the reason is that it was in such a mess that it wasn't performing its primary function - to keep a record of the staff, their qualifications, references, identities, right to work in the UK and their CRB checks, as required by law.

Then we have "Our Child Protection (Safeguarding) Policy, revised at the time of the ISI inspection, has been completely re-written and is now, I hope, more user-friendly", which again skirts very carefully round the truth, which is that the policy was grossly inadequate, was hurriedly rewritten just in time for the ISI visit, was failed by the ISI and had to be rewritten all over again, and has only just been republished nearly a year later. She hopes that it is "more user friendly", as if that were its primary purpose., It isn't, the primary purpose is to ensure that procedures exist and are followed which serve to protect the children, as required by law.

Then we are told "These will be reviewed each year to keep up with changing legislation", as if that weren't a legal requirement anyway, and one which had been ignored up to now, and finally we are told "These policies and procedures can be viewed on our website or copies can be requested from the school office." which has been a legal requirement for some years, and is nothing to be all that proud of.

All this is designed to give the impression that everything is so wonderful at the school that you as parents really have no need to bother your little heads with the ISI report itself. Just file it unread and let the school carry on as before.

But in actual fact, I recommend you do read the report, very carefully, and take the trouble to understand what it is saying. I have described my understanding of it, but you should no more rely on my interpretation than that of Mrs Gumley Mason. Read the report for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

The St. Augustine's Report

Well, I now finally have it, a parent has sent it through to me, and I've had a good read. The most important page is page 4, which details the ways in which the school has failed to meet regulatory requirements - in effect the ways in which the school was breaking the law. Here is the text of the clauses from that page.

2.4 At the time of the initial visit, the school did not meet all the requirements of the Independent School Standards Regulations 2003, as subsequently amended, and therefore it was required to:

• ensure that any persons whose services are no longer used because they are considered unsuitable to work with children are always reported fully to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month of leaving the school
  [Regulation 3.(2)(b), under Welfare, health and safety];
• ensure that appropriate checks and central register entries are made on staff appointed since 1st May 2007
  [Regulations 4.(2)(a), 4.(2)(b), and 4C.(2)(b) and (d), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];
• ensure that enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks are always obtained and recorded for proprietors as necessary
  [Regulation 4C.(7), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];
• ensure that the central register of appointments is correctly completed regarding staff appointed before 1st May 2007
  [Regulation 4C.(3), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];
• ensure that the facilities provided for pupils who are ill are appropriate
  [Regulation 5.(l), under Premises and accommodation].

2.5 At the time of the final team visit, the school had rectified some of the above shortcomings, as noted in the text of the report. However, the following requirements remain unresolved, and therefore the school must:

• ensure that all appropriate checks are made on newly appointed staff [Regulation 4.(2)(a), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];
• ensure that the central register of appointments is correctly completed
  [Regulation 4C.(3), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors].

Let's look at these bullets in turn, and I'll put into plain English what they mean. Remember, if the requirement is to "ensure that xyz is done", what this means is that it wasn't being done by the school at the time of the inspection, but that it ought to have been.

• ensure that any persons whose services are no longer used because they are considered unsuitable to work with children are always reported fully to the Independent Safeguarding Authority within one month of leaving the school
  [Regulation 3.(2)(b), under Welfare, health and safety];

This first one is very serious. It is a requirement of the regulations that if a governor or member of staff resigns or is sacked when the school considers them unsuitable to work with children, then the ISA must be informed within a month of that person's departure. "Unsuitable to work with children" doesn't necessarily mean that the staff member has been convicted of a criminal offence (e.g. an indecent assault). It could be that the staff member has committed a disciplinary offence. There are a number of grounds on which a person can be considered unfit to supervise children.

The fact that the ISI is requiring that this be ensured means that they found that members of staff have left in such circumstances and the school has not notified the ISA! This means that members of staff who are considered unfit to supervise children are free to go on to take up posts elsewhere, and the reason for their departure from St. Augustine's doesn't show up when the subsequent CRB check with enhanced disclosure is made. It is obvious how this puts children in danger. They have just removed the danger from the school, without having any consideration for their responsibilities for the protection of society at large, or of their legal responsibilities.

For the ISI to state this so baldly, there must be more than one clear-cut case where referral to the ISA should have been made but wasn't. One clear case might have been accepted as being an oversight, one or more marginal cases might be regarded as a matter of reasonable differences in judgement. But the ISI is looking for a change in policy and procedure to "ensure" that this doesn't happen again in future. (In fact, section 4.6 of the report (on page 10) tells us that there were two identified cases of failure to report.)

• ensure that appropriate checks and central register entries are made on staff appointed since 1st May 2007
  [Regulations 4.(2)(a), 4.(2)(b), and 4C.(2)(b) and (d), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];

This is a really basic safeguarding principle - you make sure that people known to be a danger to children don't get employed in a school in the first place. Teachers and other staff supervising children are required to undergo CRB checks with "enhanced disclosure", which means that events such as a previous school making a report to the ISA would be flagged up as well as criminal convictions.

But the ISI is clearly stating that the school isn't consistently doing this. It isn't a matter of just one or two checks being a bit late, or the school being a bit slow with making sure that they update their register with the checks that have been made. In other words, this isn't a minor bureaucratic slip-up. For the criticism to be this harsh, it must mean that a significant number of staff have either not been CRB checked at all, or have been permitted to work unsupervised before their CRB check has come through, or there has been a failure to adequately check identities, qualifications and references. The ISI hasn't stated in detail what the failings are, they have just said that the school had to ensure that it was all put right.

Again, if you know the language, this is a stinging criticism of the school and of its failure to assure the safety of the pupils.

• ensure that enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks are always obtained and recorded for proprietors as necessary
  [Regulation 4C.(7), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];

This means that the school has not obtained the necessary CRB checks for all the governors of the school and Trustees of the charitable company which is ultimately responsible for the school. Notice they say "obtained and recorded". So again this is not a minor bureaucratic record-keeping error. It seems that they have neglected even to obtain an enhanced CRB check for at least one of the governors or trustees. So not only have they not ensured that appointed staff are safe around children, they haven't done this either for the proprietors with the ultimate responsibility for running the school.

• ensure that the central register of appointments is correctly completed regarding staff appointed before 1st May 2007
  [Regulation 4C.(3), under Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors];

The rules are slightly different for staff who were appointed before that date. In May 2007 the rules were changed in that identity checks and checks for the right to work in the UK became necessary, foreign nationals had to have an enhanced CRB check, and additional checks had to be carried out on staff who had lived abroad if the CRB check is insufficient.

But the most important aspect of this point in the ISI report is that the central register of appointments is not even correct and complete for staff who have been at the school for some years. This isn't a minor bureaucratic delay in getting the records up to date - this means that the records haven't been adequately maintained for the last several years. If it weren't for the coincidence that the rules changed in 2007, I doubt that we would have been able to know that from the ISI report.

There is an implicit criticism of OFSTED here. The school has only recently joined the ISC, and so its last inspection in July 2006 was carried out by OFSTED, not ISI. And yet ISI is critical of arrangements going back to before May 2007. The OFSTED report of the July 2006 inspection (published in October 2006) had this to say about safeguarding.

The school’s child protection policy is up to date and implemented effectively. The headteacher is the responsible child protection officer. She is readily approachable to pupils and provides an inspirational role model of respect and care for pupils of all ages.

It is hard to believe that all the safeguarding problems have sprung up since July 2006 to the extent that the ISI is making criticisms concerning regulatory failings from before May 2007. Mrs Gumley Mason has been headteacher for much longer than that, so there is no reason for the quality of safeguarding arrangements to have suddenly gone downhill just at that time. But if the problems haven't sprung up suddenly, then OFSTED missed this entirely last time they visited - and who knows how many inspections previously have also missed it?

• ensure that the facilities provided for pupils who are ill are appropriate
  [Regulation 5.(l), under Premises and accommodation].

This is the one point where the ISI report is entirely clear what the regulatory failing was. On page 10, it indicates that at the time for the initial inspection there was no washbasin in the sick room, but that this failing has since been rectified.

The initial inspection took place on 23rd and 24th March 2010. The final team visit took place on 4-6 May 2010. By then (i.e. about 6 weeks later) some of these regulatory failings had still not been rectified. Specifically, CRB checks on new staff were still not being properly carried out, and the central register of appointments had still not been corrected. If the register was still not right even after six weeks, then that is further evidence that it was in a terrible mess before.

But the ISI indicates that the other regulatory failings have been rectified. This means that the school has now belatedly sent the two notifications to the ISA which should have been made concerning former staff members who are unfit to supervise children.

 In addition to these regulatory failings, there are a number of areas in which the school has been graded "unsatisfactory". The first of these areas is governance, leadership and management.

2.3 The quality of governance, leadership and management, whilst good in some aspects, notably in supporting high attainment and excellent personal development, is unsatisfactory overall because it has not ensured that safeguarding procedures and practice meet the required standard. The school has been slow to report teachers who may be unsuitable to work with children and its procedures for making and recording appointments have not been sufficiently rigorous. Relationships between governors and senior managers are good. Governors are committed to the school and give their time generously to become actively involved in its daily life. However, proprietors have not always been kept fully informed and have not questioned with sufficient rigour to enable them to fulfil all their responsibilities in respect of compliance with regulations. The systems for accountability within the leadership team are not sufficiently clear and, at the time of the initial inspection, leadership had not adequately discharged its responsibility for regulatory matters. Responses to the pre-inspection questionnaire indicate that the vast majority of parents and pupils are very happy with the school.

Let's unpack this. Safeguarding procedures aren't up to scratch (more on this later). In addition, the proprietors haven't been kept fully informed! The person responsible for informing the proprietors about safeguarding issues is the headteacher or the designated teacher for children. At St. Augustine's, Mrs. Frances Gumley Mason is both headteacher and designated teacher for child protection. The ISI are saying that she hasn't kept the proprietors informed, and that they haven't thought to demand information.

The next area marked down is welfare, health and safety.

4.6 The school's arrangements for welfare, health and safety, while good in some aspects, are unsatisfactory overall because the required appointment checks were not carried out and recorded and concerns about the suitability of two staff members were not reported to the appropriate authorities as required. The school acted quickly to take and act upon advice from safeguarding agencies in relation to the referrals. Good progress has since been made in the completion of the single central register of appointments.

It can hardly be graded other than unsatisfactory if there are relevant regulatory failings. But there is more on health and safety.

4.8 The school is compassionate and caring towards any vulnerable pupils. All employees, governors and volunteers are trained in child protection issues and there is an appropriate number of designated child protection officers; a number of senior staff have undertaken training in safe recruitment methods. Safeguarding issues also feature as a standing item on governors’ meeting agenda. The child protection policy, whilst good in some respects and containing useful guidance for staff, is unsatisfactory overall. In particular, it does not follow closely enough the statutory guidance in relation to the manner in which concerns are handled and reported, placing inappropriate emphasis on investigation by the school and not identifying clearly the proper threshold for referring concerns to other agencies such as the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). This has led to weaknesses in implementation. At the initial inspection visit, significant shortcomings in practice were identified with regard to the requirement to report to the appropriate authorities, within one month of leaving the school, any person whose services are no longer required because he or she is considered unsuitable to work with children.

So, the child protection policy was inadequate. The additional failing mentioned here is the same as was identified at St. Benedict's. The school was attempting to investigate allegations itself rather than referring them automatically to the LADO.

There are very good and important reasons why the school should not undertake its own investigations. First, there is a clear conflict of interest - the reputation of the school is damaged by a paedophile case, and so the temptation is to quietly investigate and find that there is no problem, and therefore no need to tell anybody about it. Second, the staff member who is being investigated will already be known to the headteacher and may have been appointed by her. The natural assumption for the headteacher is that such a person is unlikely to have done whatever is being alleged. And so the investigation is prejudiced at the outset by the preconceptions of the person supposedly investigating. From the information available in the report there is no way of knowing whether these failings have resulted in avoidable harm to children at the school.

The great advantage of automatic referral to the LADO is that the LADO is independent of the school. So he or she is in a better position to see whether the allegation warrants an investigation by the police or by Social Services. He or she is not going to be burdened with the belief that the teacher is a wonderful person who would never do such a thing.

It is noticeable that a brand-new safeguarding policy has just been published on the school website, ratified by the governors on 16th February 2011, or nearly 11 months after the initial visit from the inspectors which identified the safeguarding concerns. But even now the safguarding policy is not at clear as it should be on this topic.

The Ealing Safeguarding Children board Guidance says:
15.2.1 The employer must inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) immediately an allegation is made.

The St. Augustine's Safeguarding policy says:
When deciding whether to make a referral, following an allegation or suspicion of abuse, the Designated teacher will not make her own decision over what appear to be borderline cases, but rather the doubts and concerns should be discussed with the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). This may be done tentatively and without giving names in the first instance. What appears trivial at first may later be revealed to be much more serious and an allegation of child abuse or neglect may lead to a criminal investigation.

That seems like rather a lot of wriggle room is being inserted, in that the school is being given the option to decide what are borderline cases. Why can't the policy simply reflect the ESCB guidance and simply say "The Designated Teacher shall inform the LADO immediately an allegation is made."? Simple, to the point, and sets a clear requirement. It is then for the LADO to decide that the issue is trivial, borderline or whatever, and inform the school as to what action (if any) is appropriate. That is what the LADO is there for.

Then there is more on leadership and management

5.3 Leadership and management of the educational aspects of the school are mostly good but weaknesses in safeguarding practice make them unsatisfactory overall. The senior management team have worked well together and many improvements have been successfully made since the last inspection. These underpin pupils’ excellent personal development and good achievements. Senior managers generate a clear sense of commonality of purpose through their commitment to the school’s ethos; pupils know that they are cared for as individuals and not just on the basis of their academic achievements. The senior management team encourages in staff a sense of the school’s traditions and values. At the same time it is open to new developments in response to the girls’ interests, for example the inclusion of psychology in the A-level option choices.

5.4 Leadership at the highest level has relied heavily on informal procedures to identify and implement improvements. This approach, whilst effective for some management processes, does not provide a consistent mechanism for evaluating the success of new initiatives, for monitoring the implementation of policies or for driving strategic development based on earlier achievements. Weaknesses in the operation of recruitment checks and in the drafting and implementation of the child protection policy have resulted in inadequacies in safeguarding practice. However, good measures operate to ensure that all staff and volunteers are aware of and trained in their responsibilities concerning pupils’ safeguarding, welfare, health and safety.

There is something very curious about the use of language here. The report is reasonably complimentary about the "senior management team", but is rather critical of "leadership at the highest level". The ISI never names names in its reports when offering judgements, it only provides generalised indications of levels of management. But given that safeguarding is again the subject here, it is possible to decode this. The ISI is making specific criticism of the headmistress, who has this responsibility in her role as Designated Teacher for safeguarding.

Publication of this report has been delayed by several months. Normally an ISI report is published 3-4 months after the initial visit. The ISI has confirmed that publication was delayed by legal action. Why it is being published now is something of a mystery given how critical the ISI is of the school's safeguarding arrangements - admittedly in somewhat coded language. One can only wonder what the original draft report looked like.