By Gavin Mackintosh-
A UK school which lost a £100,000 legal battle in its attempt to gag Ofsted from publishing an ‘inadequate’ inspection report connected with racism and homophobia, has finally been named and exposed.
Lady Lumley’s School, in Pickering, North Yorkshire, lost the expensive court battle after being graded ‘inadequate’ by the school watchdog during an inspection in October last year.
The school is a mainly White British mainstream school for pupils with learning disability, but pupils falling under the latter group are below 40%.The remaining tiny numbers of students originate from a variety of minority ethnic heritages including Russian, Chinese and Black Caribbean.
Ofsted told The Eye Of Media.Com that the standard of education itself is good, but that the effectiveness of leadership was generally poor, effectively overshadowing the decent academic standard provided in the school.
Five Ofsted inspectors spoke to pupils, parents and teachers during their visit last October, and concluded the persistent level of bullying, racist and homophobic language to be so bad that it makes the overall standard of the school inadequate.
The school objected to the branding of its pupils as “endemically” racist and homophobic that it tried to protect its reputation by putting up a fight over the conclusions. It failed at a very high cost.
Ofsted said that although leaders think that they take bullying seriously and believe that they act on it, a large minority of pupils, and parents, do not share this view.
Some appropriate action by leaders to try to bring about an improvement had failed to stop some pupils from continuing to behave inappropriately. Ofsted said the school needed to review the way it handled bullying so that pupils and parents can have confidence that leaders protect pupils from bullying.
Lady Lumley’s was granted an anonymity order in January to prevent publication of the report, pending its legal fight to prevent the publication. However, last month it lost a High Court appeal for the injunction and the report was published on Tuesday.
Racist And Homophobic Language
The report said pupils were concerned about regular use of racist and homophobic language around the school that “is not always challenged” by staff. This inspection was initially carried out under section 8 of the Education Act because of concerns about standards of behaviour and the extent to which pupils were safe, the inspection was deemed a section 5 inspection.
Leaders think that they take bullying seriously and believe that they act on it
effectively. However, the Ofsted report pointed out that a large minority of pupils, and parents, do not share this view.
Ineffective Leadership
Some appropriate action by leaders to try to bring about an improvement, had failed to stop some pupils from continuing to behave inappropriately, the report said.
Ofsted said the school needed to review the way it handled bullying so that pupils and parents can have confidence that leaders protect pupils from bullying..
The secondary school was rated as ‘good’ in 2016, leading the school to argue that dramatic drop to ‘inadequate’ in three years “cannot be justified on any rational basis”.
Inspectors said a “large minority of pupils do not feel safe in school. They do not feel protected from bullying. They do not believe that there is an adult they could talk to if they were worried about anything.
“They are fearful of, and are fed up with, the behaviour of a small group of pupils… They are not confident that leaders will sort any of this out.”
The school has since commissioned a review of safeguarding and dedicated more staff time to pastoral support.
A council spokesman said a full safeguarding review had been conducted by interviewing students about their experience at school and that the council had also commissioned an independent review of behaviour and other issues raised in the report, which was carried out by a specialist, education consultancy.
The county council has now applied to set up an Interim Executive Board to support Lady Lumley’s School. It is also working with the secondary school and the Regional Schools Commissioner to find an academy sponsor as it moves towards academisation.
Judith Kirk, North Yorkshire’s Assistant Director for Education and Skills said told The Eye Of Media.Com: “Our responsibility is to make sure all children feel safe and valued to ensure they continue to have the best education.
“We have zero tolerance of bullying or prejudiced behaviour of any kind in our schools; it is a matter we take very, very seriously. We will now be working closely with the school, the wider school community and the Regional Schools Commissioner as Lady Lumley’s School moves towards academisation.
“We are very grateful to parents and carers for their support and understanding as we work together on the next chapter for the school.”
An Ofsted Spokesperson said: ”Our inspectors spoke to school leaders, parents and pupils, and concluded that the overall leadership was inadequate and the fact this kind of language was often not challenged was a poor reflection on the school”.
”The school leaders disputed our findings. Ofsted was successful in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal, and legal proceedings are now concluded. We are pleased we are now finally able to publish the report, which speaks for itself
In response to how the problem can be improved moving forward, Ofsted said: ”it is now down to the Regional School Commissioner in the Yorkshire area to act on our findings”.