The ban at Ampleforth

Ampleforth College, St. Benedict's sister school in Yorkshire, has been served with an Enforcement Notice by the Department for Education, banning it from accepting any new pupils. The decision clearly has been made in person by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson MP.

According to the letter published on the gov.uk website there was an Ofsted inspection on 24-25 September and as a result:

the Secretary of State for Education (“the SoS”) is satisfied that one or more of the independent school standards (“the ISS”) are not being met in relation to the School.

This isn't just one bad report. This has being going on for nearly five years. The letter goes on to say:

In taking this decision, the SoS has principally had regard to Ofsted and ISI inspection reports from January 2016 to the present day, and the School’s response to regulatory action.

And he makes it clear that the school has been warned.

Further, following an inspection carried out by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (“the ISI”) on 7-8 March 2018, which also found that the ISS were not being met, a statutory notice was issued to the School pursuant to section 114 of the Act, requiring an action plan. An action plan was submitted in response to that notice on 11 June 2018 but was deemed to be unacceptable and was rejected by the SoS on 10 July 2018. The School was advised of this decision by a letter dated 10 July 2018.

Williamson acknowledges that the school has complained, and it cuts no ice with him.

It is acknowledged that the School has filed a complaint against Ofsted’s recent findings, and the SoS has carefully considered that complaint, as well as correspondence which sets out the School’s views on the contents of the report. However, having taken this into account, the SoS is satisfied that the standards are not being met.

He describes the specific clauses of the Independent School Standards that are not being met. There are a number of clauses, but the school's failure to meet the first is the most important.

7. The standard in this paragraph is met if the proprietor ensures that—

(a) arrangements are made to safeguard and promote the welfare of pupils at the school; and

(b) such arrangements have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.

There's a similar clause specific to boarding provision and also a clause about leadership which are also listed as having been failed. But basically this is about inadequate safeguarding.

It's not just ISI and Ofsted inspection reports that have been critical of safeguarding at the school. Ampleforth (along with Downside School) was the subject of an excoriating report by IICSA (the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse).

The ban on new pupils comes into effect in 28 days unless the school decides to appeal the notice, and it has announced it will do so. This was included in an article in The Guardian about the notice.

A spokesperson for the college said it had noted the department’s intent to serve notice of an enforcement action.

“We will be appealing this on the basis that we believe, and have been advised, that it is unjustified and based on incorrect information,” the spokesperson said.

Governments (especially Conservative ones) don't like to close private schools - it means that they would have to educate the pupils at public expense instead. For the just under 500 pupils at Ampleforth, that means an extra £3m or so per year on the education budget. So Gavin Williamson will have needed some persuading that he had to act.

Enforcement Notices like this are pretty rare - there have only been eight in the last three years, mostly against small newly-established little local religious schools, usually with only 50 pupils or so. For an old public school like Ampleforth to get an enforcement notice is completely unprecedented.

A few people on Twitter have suggested that this is all an anti-Catholic or at least anti-religious move. This is a classic example.

I would like to express my deep anger at the Dept of Education doing its best to destroy a wonderful spiritual school. Ampleforth. It has completely revamped after the previous awful crimes. But nasty woke bastards want it closed. It will survive and thrive.

— Seb Leslie (@CllrSebLeslie) November 27, 2020

But this accusation is ridiculous with respect to this government. First the cabinet is stuffed to the roof with privately educated ministers, including several Old Etonians. William Rees-Mogg (Leader of the House of Commons) was married by the Abbot of Downside, and the public inquiry heard evidence to the effect that Michael Gove intervened when Secretary of State for Education in a local safeguarding investigation into Downside School. This government cannot remotely be described as "woke" and is clearly not disposed against private education and specifically not against Catholic private education.

So we have to conclude that the Ofsted evidence is compelling enough to persuade a Conservative Secretary of State for Education, well-disposed towards private education and with prominent Catholics among his cabinet colleagues, to act against Ampleforth.

But we haven't seen the Ofsted report, so we can't tell. The school has seen it and has said it is complaining, and has objected to publication. This isn't the first time in my experience that a school has complained against an adverse inspection report. In 2011 St. Augustine's Priory School in Ealing in west London complained about an adverse inspection report from the Independent Schools Inspectorate, and even sought Judicial Review of the report.

The history of this is interesting. The JR was put on hold while the school went through the Stage 1 complaints process with ISI. This did the school no good at all, the final report was even more damning than the original, because its conclusions were more clearly stated and more carefully evidenced. The report was published and the JR case abandoned. The head teacher resigned (actually being escorted off the premises) and several of the governors were replaced.

As it happens, irrespective of the Stage 1 complaint, the JR would have stood almost no chance of success. To overturn a government administrative decision (which is what an inspection report is in effect) you need to demonstrate not only that a different decision could reasonably have been reached but also that nobody with two brain cells to rub together would ever have honestly come to the original decision. (Lawyers would put it differently, but that's the essence of it.) Very few cases reach that extremely high bar.

This is highly relevant to Ampleforth. They are in a much more precarious position than St. Augustine's Priory School were. They have already received an enforcement notice banning them from taking more pupils. As independent schools aren't financially viable unless they are full, this will lead to the closure of the school sooner rather than later.

So the school has a choice to make. Do they fight or do they co-operate? If they genuinely believe the Ofsted report is a load of hogwash and think they can prove it, then they may well decide to fight, and the initial indication is that they will do so. They told the papers they would appeal and have asked parents and alumni to help with lots of supportive public testimonials on social media.

But very interestingly the statement on the school's own website is subtly different from what they said to the papers when the story first broke.

Ampleforth College notes the Department for Education’s publication on Friday 26 November of the intent to serve notice of an Enforcement Action.

We strongly believe, and have been advised, that this is completely unjustified and based on incorrect information. We will be pursuing a number of different options to resolve the situation before the restriction is enforced, including an appeal, and we are very confident this can be achieved.

Note the difference. Here they say that they are "pursuing a number of different options ...  including an appeal". That is wording that signals that they might not fight, that an appeal may well not happen.

They have a huge problem with an appeal if (privately) they conclude that the Ofsted report is sufficiently solid that they are not going to overturn it. To get into a legal fight you need a good case. St. Augustine's is a cautionary tale of how you can (metaphorically speaking) get your head handed back to you on a plate if you try to fight a legal battle without evidence. You can assert things without evidence in social media but you can't get your lawyers to do that in court. As President Trump has discovered, if you ask them to, they drop you as a client. So all the social media in the world won't help them if they have no evidence.

So if the Ofsted report is solid, and given the school's long history of failure to meet standards for child protection that almost every school in the country manages routinely to achieve, it is going to be extremely hard to persuade the Tribunal to which they have to appeal that the Secretary of State's decision is so precipitate and disproportionate that it should be overturned. Either that or they prove that DfE lacks the legal power to issue the notice. Basically, their chances are miniscule. It's just not going to happen. Gavin Williamson will have been advised by the government legal service (full of very good lawyers) before he made his decision.

If the school and its lawyers reach that conclusion, then an appeal is ruled out - it would fail and that failure would only serve to further antagonize the DfE, whose mercy they will have to beg for. So at the end of this month the ban on new pupils would come into effect.

The school will then have to try and persuade Gavin Williamson at some point in the future that it really has changed and that it is safe for him to lift the ban. That means they will have to work extremely fast. A new action plan (better than past ones) will have to be drawn up. It will have to be far more robust than previous rejected plans. The school will need to demonstrate in this plan that sticking to it will effectively make a relapse into old habits impossible. That might require a more thorough separation, both physically and organisationally from the habits occupying the adjacent monastery. That is what St. Benedict's School did with respect to Ealing Abbey following Lord Carlile's report.

They can then submit their plan to DfE, get on with implementing it and invite DfE to commission Ofsted to inspect again before the end of the academic year. A good report can lead to a request to DfE to lift the ban on new pupils in time for September. If an appeal is ruled out, this is the only way I can see for the school to survive.

But this would involve a public admission that their safeguarding really hasn't been up to scratch all these years, even though they have been loudly telling parents otherwise. This risks a calamitous loss of confidence by parents in the school. Parents will find it very hard to understand if the school chooses not to appeal the notice given the extent to which they have been whipped up to participate in a PR campaign in the school's defense. Nobody likes to be taken for a sucker.

Not all parents will withdraw their children, but some will. More parents may hesitate to take up a place at the school. It's one thing to discount the risk of your child being sexually abused when the school gives you a strong assurance that the mistakes of the past are over and the risk is now minimal. It's quite another to discount that risk when the school admits to lying over its earlier assurances. In fact, the more solid the case against the school, the greater the risk of admitting it and trying to placate the DfE. The school may find itself financially unviable because not enough parents are prepared to send their children there. They may need to re-hire their old PR consultants Chelgate run by former pupil Terence Fane-Saunders to try and head off this eventuality.

I don't know what the school will do. They can fight the DfE or they can appease it. I don't see how they can do both at the same time, as any failed attempt at fighting will make appeasement much less likely to succeed. I also don't know what's in the Ofsted report that has caused DfE to take this action and how solid it is.

If the school is genuinely prepared to do a good job of protecting its pupils and be seen to do so to the satisfaction of a skeptical DfE, then fine. I have no wish to see a good safe school close. But if they haven't and either can't or won't put in that effort, then the school must and will close. Time will tell.

Departure from Downside

The monks of Downside have announced their intention to leave Downside Abbey and find a new home. In some ways it is not a great surprise. There are only 12 monks left, the governance of Downside School was made independent last year and they are presumably rattling around in premises designed for several times as many people.

But we need also to consider the backdrop of the abuses so thoroughly documented by IICSA. The inquiry found that over decades there had been a refusal to cooperate with the statutory authorities over child sex abuse perpetrated by monks. Given that old attitudes die hard, removing the monks from the vicinity of the school is probably best all round, both for the safety of the pupils and to move the monks out of the reach of temptation.

There has been a little comment on Twitter expressing regret at the monks’ departure. Few of these have faced squarely the background of abuse. Where it has been referred to it has been described as a “period of evil” which has brought down the Abbey. I’m profoundly sceptical about that interpretation. Admittedly we only know about abuse victims from the last few decades. Any older victims are now dead and unable to tell their story. But there’s no reason to think the abuse only happened within living memory.

Some conservative Catholics put the blame on Vatican II and the changes that followed. But I know of Benedictine abuse which preceded Vatican II.

One of the great characteristics of the Catholic Church and Catholic faith is its attachment to continuity and stability. It deals in what it regards as unchanging eternal truths. So why would we not believe that the church’s attitude (and that of the Downside monks) towards covering up abuse has been similarly stable over a long period? Without access to historical records that I’m pretty sure have long since been destroyed there is no means of ever of proving it. 

But if it is true that abuse and cover up has been going on since the abbey and school were established in Somerset in 1814, then the monks’ departure from next door to the school is a matter for celebration, not sorrow.