By Gabriel Princewill-
Ofsted must address serious complaints of inaccuracies in its latest publication about Amplefort College, after the school has seriously accused the education watchdog of misrepresenting facts in its report.
Refusal to address the complaints in detail will highly compromise the credibility and integrity of The Office For School Standards ( Ofsted) , and show the education inspectorate to be turning a blind eye to the efficacy of its operations.
The damning report against the £36,000 a year boarding school in North Yorkshire has cast a dark shadow over the school which has been the subject of historic child abuse in the past.
The school was criticized in 2018 in a report by an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse which found they hid appalling abuse to pupils as young as seven, to protect the church’s reputation.
The inquiry stated that leaders at Ampleforth and Downside in Somerset linked to Benedictine monasteries run at times by “secretive, evasive and suspicious” church officials who avoided reporting misconduct to police and social services.
With a bar of further admission of children in the school once put on the school by the British government before being reversed, the Catholic boarding school had not fully recovered from the negative publicity of the past, when the new bombshells waiting to demolish its reputation completely were executed by Ofsted’s publication. This time, the school has come out fighting, accusing Ofsted of reckless inaccuracies.
Reckless
Amplefort college told The Eye Of Media.Com that Ofsted recklessly ignored factual corrections it made to its report, and is yet to demonstrate any signs of taking its complaints about the report seriously.
The school which has been on Easter holidays since the 24th of March is livid with Ofsted’s report. One member of staff corned by this publication who insisted on anonymity, accused Ofsted of ”irresponsible reporting”, saying ”it is hoped Ofsted will correct all its dreadful errors of the report by the 19th when pupils return to school.
It amounts to irresponsible reporting for Ofsted to make a catalogue of factual errors in a report it publishes and have no shame in failing to correct them”.
Complain Stages
The school said it has gone through three stages of complaints, with the final stage sent to the watchdog on the 14th of March. Nearly a month later, the college has still heard nothing.
Its headteacher and staff are fuming with the official report which they say is wholly inaccurate.
On receipt of the final report from Ofsted, the college highlighted what it has described as ”factual inaccuracies’ about the report, but the watchdog, whose shortcomings are under scrutiny, ignored them, choosing to pursue a published report instead.
Responsible organizations and departments are expected to confirm the veracity of their reports before they are made public. One would expect Ofsted to be a champion of such objectives, but it seems to have prioritized other considerations over the integrity of its findings.
The ratings of schools provided by Ofsted has often been indicative to parents of the quality of the school. Yet, the watchdog’s image and credibility could progressively be tarnished if it continues to give misleading information on occasions, with little regard to the actual truth of the matter.
Contention
The college’s contention of Ofsted’s reference to two cases of two students who engaged in ‘penetrative’ sexual activity is too serious to take lightly. Ofsted cannot justify ignoring serious challenges to claims of false accounts in its report.
Academic researcher , Joshua Hoploop criticized Ofsted’s approach. ” You can’t have Ofsted refusing to address a claim of inaccuracy about their findings, it completely undermines their integrity. They appeared to have rushed the publication of the report just to be seen to be publishing something. It’s bad and doesn’t look very good on Ofsted, or its boss, Amanda Spieldman”.
Amplefort College said the education watchdog’s conclusion was contrary to the statement’s of those involved in the situation, and an independent witness.
The police report states ‘no implication of penetration’ and ‘No further action for Police’. The witness described ‘a three second incident in which both [students] were laughing’. A third student was in the room.
Damning
Ofsted’s report about the supervision of student’s were quite damning. It stated that students were not supervised sufficiently well. According to the report, they were getting changed for sports and in line with usual safeguarding procedures, and that staff are not allowed in a room while students change.
However, the college continues to insist that staff were on duty in the corridor outside the changing room. Both Ofsted and the college cannot be right about the facts of the case, the watchdog had a duty to irrefutably states the facts and investigate any contention about them.
Ofsted accused the school of having risk assessments that were insufficient, a claim the school has vehemently denied.
Safeguarding Decisions
The college also criticized Ofsted’s conclusion that the special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) is not sufficiently involved in safeguarding decisions. According to the College, it provided Ofsted with many examples of expert input from its Special Educational Needs (SEN) team on safeguarding issues concerning pupils with SEN, yet the inspectorate turned a blind eye to those complaints.
The college highlights the case of the Year 13 incident which Ofsted implies it was brought to their attention by whistleblowers, whereas the school fully reported to the appropriate agency that same day and immediately undertook an exercise to learn lessons.
Ofsted’s report had claimed to have found 81 Year 13 pupils who were “frustrated because they were unable to have a graduation party due to COVID-19 restrictions”, and had left their dormitories to gather at about 02:30 GMT.
“These unsupervised students consumed alcohol that had been brought onto site in secret,” it said.
“One student was found unconscious and alone in an orchard, another student was hospitalized because of excess alcohol consumption.” During its inspection visit in late 2021, Ofsted said arrangements to safeguard pupils remained ineffective.
Erroneous
The boarding school disputed Ofsted’s assertion that a student missing for an hour and unconscious in an orchard is simply incorrect. A logged phone call with the student and other evidence demonstrate that they were absent for a total of 15 minutes and were not unconscious, the school has said.
‘A trace of class A drugs was found in one student’s room but there was no evidence of drugs being consumed,’ it added.
‘In recognition that this was the Year 13 students’ last night at school and there had been some frustrations about Covid restrictions, boarding House staff stayed up until 1.30am and were on duty all night’, the school said.
The school said ‘established and maintained security procedures were in place including on-site security personnel, CCTV alarm systems, security stays on windows and other security devices. The students planned and co-ordinated their departure from the boarding houses after 2am, and damaged or disabled the security systems in order to evade detection’.
‘This is a matter of great regret and they were disciplined in a manner which reflected the seriousness of the incident. Long before Ofsted’s inspection, the school commissioned and had implemented additional security measures’.
Errors On Conclusions Relating To Statutory Guidance
The school also attacked Ofsted’s report that there have been multiple cases where the school has failed to follow statutory guidance when a member of staff is dismissed, claiming this to have been founded on a single case.
In line with statutory and local authority guidance, the senior leadership team consulted the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) and, with the LADO’s support, decided not to refer the member of staff to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) until the relevant employment related process was complete.
There was no question of the member of staff in question applying for another job in education in the meantime as this would require a reference, and full disclosure from the College.
The College said it had consulted the LADO for external specialist statutory guidance so they could responsibly discharge their safeguarding obligations. It is hard to reconcile this with Ofsted’s criticism of senior leaders not accepting responsibility for safeguarding.
The private school has criticized Ofsted’s claim that the College safeguarding is inadequate because the arrangements agreed between the College and the nearby Ampleforth Abbey had changed. Ofsted concluded that this means monks found guilty of child sexual abuse could live in the neighbouring monastery. ”This is incorrect” , Ampleforth College states.
In line with arrangements put in place in recent years, the School and the Abbey have become two separate institutions with delineated sites and marked boundaries. This separation is monitored and controlled by CCTV, fences, risk assessments, a robust Visitor Policy, and security personnel.
The monastic community is subject to regulatory oversight and concerns about any person implicated in misconduct is a matter for determination between the monastic community, its Charitable Trustees said in a Statement by Ampleforth College.
All resident monks have enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service clearance
(a requirement of the Catholic Church for any monk in ministry). Nine of the monks at Ampleforth Abbey work in the College as Chaplains, the college said.
They have gone through all the usual checks for staff required by safer recruitment regulations. Like all other visitors to the school, monks who are not members of staff must register at Reception, wear a specifically coloured lanyard and be accompanied by an authorized member of staff at all times.
In a statement to this publication, Amplefort College said: ‘On receipt of the draft report from Ofsted, we responded with detailed comments on all factual inaccuracies, line by line – Ofsted made some minor changes as a result but nothing material.
On receipt of the final report, we submitted a formal complaint about the key factual inaccuracies – Ofsted made no changes to the report.
On 14 March we submitted a formal request to Ofsted for an internal review of our complaint in line with Step 3 of Ofsted’s internal complaints procedure – this is ongoing”.