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.