“Duty to inspect certain schools at prescribed intervals (1) It is the duty of the Chief Inspector – (a) to inspect under this section every school in England to which this section applies, at such intervals as may be prescribed, and (b) when the inspection has been completed, to make a report of the inspection in writing.” (1) It is the duty of the Chief Inspector – (a) to inspect under this section every school in England to which this section applies, at such intervals as may be prescribed, and (b) when the inspection has been completed, to make a report of the inspection in writing.”
“Publication of inspection reports” (1) The Chief Inspector may arrange for any report of an inspection carried out by him under any provision of this Chapter (whether the report is required by any such provision or is otherwise made in pursuance of his functions under that provision) to be published in such manner as he considers appropriate.” (1) The Chief Inspector may arrange for any report of an inspection carried out by him under any provision of this Chapter (whether the report is required by any such provision or is otherwise made in pursuance of his functions under that provision) to be published in such manner as he considers appropriate.”
“(4) The appropriate authority must – (a) make a copy of any report sent to the authority under subsection (1) available for inspection by members of the public at such times and at such place as may be reasonable, (b) provide a copy of the report, free of charge or in prescribed cases on payment of such fee as they think fit (not exceeding the cost of supply), to any person who asks for one, and (c) take such steps as are reasonably practicable to secure that every registered parent of a registered pupil at the school receives a copy of the report within such period following receipt of the report by the authority as may be prescribed.”
“Overall effectiveness – Inadequate The quality of education – Good Behaviour and attitudes – Inadequate Personal development – Requires improvement Leadership and management – Inadequate Sixth-form provision – Good Overall effectiveness at previous inspection – Good”
“… Classrooms are usually calm and orderly. Behaviour in lessons is usually good. Expectations of what pupils can achieve are high. This includes for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). There is an effective curriculum which helps pupils to do well by the end of key stage 4. Staff are proud to work at the school. However, elsewhere, a different picture emerges. 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. Some pupils do not believe that the school site is secure. They feel threatened on school transport. They hear abusive language regularly, which is not routinely challenged by staff. They are not confident that leaders will sort any of this out. Some pupils have come to accept that this is how it is.”
“The school provides a good quality of education. Leaders have made sure that an effective curriculum is in place. Subject leaders have thought about what pupils need to learn and when. They have organised their schemes of learning so that pupils build up their knowledge and skills in a logical way. Due to the ambitious and well-planned curriculum, pupils achieve well by the end of key stage 4. The school is effective in meeting the needs of pupils with SEND and those who are disadvantaged. They are appropriately supported.”
“Pupils access a wide range of opportunities outside their lessons. This includes residential visits abroad. Leaders have put in place a programme to support pupils in their understanding of the world beyond the school gates. For instance, pupils visited a mosque last year. However, pupils’ knowledge of faiths and cultures beyond Christianity is variable.”
“[Pupils] told inspectors that there is regular disruption by a small ‘hard core’ of pupils. … Leaders have put lots of actions in place to try to break this cycle, yet pupils are not confident that things will change. Pupils told inspectors that behaviour on one of the school buses is poor. Pupils feel threatened by the conduct of some pupils. Pupils do not feel safe on the school field because of the behaviour of some pupils. … Pupils are concerned about the regular use of homophobic and racist language around school. They said that when staff hear such language, it is not always challenged. A large minority of pupils have little confidence in the school’s ability to deal with bullying. … Some parents and carers share pupils’ views about the ineffective management of bullying. … … [Leaders] and governors are not doing enough to tackle the weaknesses in the school. This is partly because they do not know that the weaknesses exist. When presented with the evidence of weaknesses, leaders do not accept it to be the case.”
“A large minority of pupils do not feel safe in school. They are concerned that leaders do not tackle issues such as bullying well enough. … [Pupils] and parents also worry about the security of the school site. Leaders’ actions have not reassured a large minority of parents and pupils that the site is safe. Leaders’ attitude towards site safety is complacent. They believe that because there have been no security incidents in the past, there will be none in the future. Governors have a limited understanding of how to hold leaders to account for safeguarding pupils. Governors do not know what to look for or ask about. They do not know what leaders do to check that safeguarding arrangements are working as they should.”
“To inspect the safeguarding arrangements in school, we looked at the records of staff employed at the school and the checks made on them. We met with the staff with responsibility for safeguarding. We sampled a case file to look at how the school identifies, helps and manages vulnerable pupils. We spoke with numerous pupils, staff and governors about safeguarding. We scrutinised the school’s records of accidents, bullying incidents and behavioural incidents. We considered the school’s records of homophobic and racists incidents. Information relating to site security was considered.”
“Some pupils and parents are not confident that the school site is safe. However, leaders do not think that pupils or parents should be worried about site safety. Leaders should take action to listen to these anxieties and to understand them. They should take appropriate and reasonable steps to reassure pupils and parents about site safety. Pupils reported widespread use of homophobic and racist language. Some pupils do not report this because they do not expect staff or leaders to act. Some pupils have become hardened to such abusive language. Leaders should act to address the school culture in which such language is endemic and considered normal.”
“I have reviewed the evidence base. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of sources and from across the team. Inspectors took a balanced and proportionate view when analysing and evaluating this evidence, exercising their professional judgement to reach a corporate decision.”
“It is accurate to say that leaders’ attitude toward site safety is complacent. When first asked about the security and safety of the site with regard to parents’ and pupils’ views, and whether there was a formal risk assessment, the DHT said, ‘We’ve never had a problem’. In a subsequent meeting, when asked for his response to the concerns expressed by parents and pupils about the site following the ‘lockdown’, the HT said that, ‘The lockdown did not cause grief. They [parents and pupils] have got themselves in a tizzy’. When I raised the matter again in a third meeting, my record states that ‘Leaders’ response is that they’ve never had any problem so assume there won’t be any problems in the future’. More widely, when I gave the HT and DHT the evidence which had led to the decision to convert [from a section 8 to a section 5 inspection], including worries about feeling safe, the HT said that I had based the decision on the views of ‘a gaggle of girls’. This evidence supports the view that leaders’ attitude to site safety is complacent. At no point did inspectors suggest that the solution to the concerns of parents and pupils was to build a fence around the site and lock every door. However, inspectors did expect that a serious issue such as site security, particularly given the concerns expressed by parents and pupils, would have been formally risk-assessed.”
“It is correct to say that I did not attend a scheduled meeting. This was because I extended the pupil meeting which preceded it, to further explore the safeguarding matters which had arisen at the end of the [section] 8 [inspection]. I explained to the HT and DHT in the KIT meeting shortly afterwards, why I had missed the meeting. The meeting had a specific focus … to review a case file as evidence of leaders’ safeguarding practices … . I told leaders that I would check a case file later in the day. I also told them that should they, or the DSL, wish to share any other information, they could do so and I would find the time. In any case, I apologised for missing the meeting and hoped that leaders understood why and accepted the new arrangement. Leaders said yes. I received no subsequent requests for a meeting with the DSL or to discuss safeguarding.”
“Turning then to the balance of convenience, it is necessary in cases in which a party is a public authority performing duties to the public that “one must look at the balance of convenience more widely, and take into account the interests of the public in general to whom these duties are owed:” see Smith v. Inner London Education Authority [1978] 1 All E.R. 411, 422, per Browne L.J., and see also Sierben v. Westminster City Council (1987) 86 L.G.R. 431. Like Browne L.J., I incline to the opinion that this can be treated as one of the special factors referred to by Lord Diplock in the passage from his speech [in American Cyanamid] which I have quoted. In this context, particular stress should be placed upon the importance of upholding the law of the land, in the public interest, bearing in mind the need for stability in our society, and the duty placed upon certain authorities to enforce the law in the public interest. This is of itself an important factor to be weighed in the balance when assessing the balance of convenience. So if a public authority seeks to enforce what is on its face the law of the land, and the person against whom such action is taken challenges the validity of that law, matters of considerable weight have to be put into the balance to outweigh the desirability of enforcing, in the public interest, what is on its face the law, and so to justify the refusal of an interim injunction in favour of the authority, or to render it just or convenient to restrain the authority for the time being enforcing the law. … .”
“I myself am of the opinion that in these cases, as in others, the discretion conferred upon the court cannot be fettered by a rule; I respectfully doubt whether there is any rule that, in cases such as these, a party challenging the validity of a law must – to resist an application for an interim injunction against him, or to obtain an interim injunction restraining the enforcement of the law – show a strong prima facie case that the law is invalid. It is impossible to foresee what cases may yet come before the courts; I cannot dismiss from my mind the possibility (no doubt remote) that such a party may suffer such serious and irreparable harm in the event of the law being enforced against him that it may be just or convenient to restrain its enforcement by an interim injunction even though so heavy a burden has not been discharged by him. In the end, the matter is one for the discretion of the court, taking into account all the circumstances of the case. Even so, the court should not restrain a public authority by interim injunction from enforcing an apparently authentic law unless it is satisfied, having regard to all the circumstances, that the challenge to the validity of the law is, prima facie, so firmly based as to justify so exceptional a course being taken.”
“39. Both sides rightly submitted that (because the range of public law cases is so wide) the court has a wide discretion to take the course which seems most likely to produce a just result (or to put the matter less ambitiously, to minimise the risk of an unjust result). … .”
“i) there is a significant public interest in publication of reports by public bodies, particularly when they are under a duty to publish ([Interim Executive Board of X] [32]; Cambridge Associates in Management v Ofsted[2013] EWHC 1157 (Admin) [60]; and [City College Birmingham)] [28]; ii) in such cases the grant of an injunction requires “pressing grounds”: R (Matthias Rath BV) v Advertising Standards Authority [2001] EMLR 22 [30]; “the most compelling reasons [are required] to prohibit a public body which is embarked on a quasi-judicial task… from publishing its decision”: [Debt Free Direct Ltd.] [24]; or “exceptional circumstances”: R(J) v A[2005] EWHC 2609 (Admin) [23]; iii) where, as in Taveta’s case, what is sought to be restrained is allegedly defamatory allegations, then the Court should have regard to the fact that, in private law cases, the principle in Bonnard v Perryman[1891] 2 Ch 269 would usually prevent the grant of an order to restrain publication of defamatory statements where the respondent contends that the proposed publication was defensible: [Interim Executive Board of X] [34]; and R v Advertising Standards Authority, ex parte Vernons Organisation Ltd[1992] 1 WLR 1289 , 1293E-1294B.”
“… If a private individual will not be restrained from expressing his opinion save on pressing grounds I see no reason why a public body having a duty, other things being equal, to express its opinion should be subject to any less rigid rules. It seems to me that the case is, if anything, analogous to one where an administrative body has an adjudicative function and in the course of its duties publishes a ruling criticising some affected person and the ruling is later disturbed or reversed by an appropriate appellate process. There are many such instances and many of them involve the criticism of members of the public, corporate or natural. I do not know of an instance in which a public body of that kind would fall to be restrained from carrying out what is no more nor less than its ordinary, but important, everyday duties simply upon the grounds that the intended publication contains material which is subject to legal challenge as being vitiated by some error of law. If the application for judicial review here is successful I cannot think but that there are ample means at the applicant’s disposal to correct any adverse impression which what, ex hypothesi, would be an unlawful report may have given to the public. Indeed, though it has not been canvassed in argument, I know of no reason why the fact that they have obtained leave should not itself be disseminated if they wish to take any steps in that direction since this is an attempt to prevent the public and indeed, in fairness to the applicant, its fellow advertisers and others in the trade to which it belongs from seeing that the authority has reached those conclusions. I do not consider that the effects of that publication are damaging to the applicant in a manner which would be so irreparable, so past recall as to amount to a pressing ground, in the language of Strasbourg, a pressing social need, to restrain this public body from carrying out its function in the ordinary way.”
“30. … I consider that the relief sought would affect the right of members of the public – in particular, existing and potential students of the College – to receive information which Ofsted wishes to communicate to them in the exercise of its statutory functions. For that reason, I consider that s.12(3) [of theHuman Rights Act 1988 ] applies. That means that I have no power to grant relief unless satisfied that the College is “likely” to establish at trial that publication should not be allowed. In this context, “likely” usually means “more likely than not”, but may mean something less than that, for example in a case where the consequences of publication would be very severe: Cream Holdings v Banerjee … , [22] (Lord Nicholls).” – in particular, existing and potential students of the College – to receive information which Ofsted wishes to communicate to them in the exercise of its statutory functions. For that reason, I consider that s.12(3) [of theHuman Rights Act 1988 ] applies. That means that I have no power to grant relief unless satisfied that the College is “likely” to establish at trial that publication should not be allowed. In this context, “likely” usually means “more likely than not”, but may mean something less than that, for example in a case where the consequences of publication would be very severe: Cream Holdings v Banerjee … , [22] (Lord Nicholls).”
“86. … [A] rationality challenge to evidence-based conclusions reached by expert inspectors whose work has been checked and assessed does not provide the firmest basis for arguing the case is one of those rare ones where the merits are so strong that that factor weighs in favour of interim injunctive relief to prevent publication of an Ofsted inspection report. “86. … [A] rationality challenge to evidence-based conclusions reached by expert inspectors whose work has been checked and assessed does not provide the firmest basis for arguing the case is one of those rare ones where the merits are so strong that that factor weighs in favour of interim injunctive relief to prevent publication of an Ofsted inspection report. 87. For this reason, and the other reasons advanced orally and in writing by [counsel], I am not persuaded that the merits of the Claimant’s case are sufficiently strong to weigh in favour of granting the relief sought.”