Ofsted: Cambridge primary school in row over inadequate rating

A primary school has become involved in a row with Ofsted after being downgraded to inadequate.

Inspectors recently found that arrangements for safeguarding at Queen Emma Primary in Cambridge - previously rated good - were "ineffective".

Sean Lang, the school's chairman of governors, said the inspection felt "like an all-out assault".

Ofsted said: "We completely refute the allegations and the report speaks for itself."

The government's schools inspectorate has faced questions after head teacher Ruth Perry took her own life ahead of an Ofsted report which rated her primary school in Reading as inadequate.

The inspectors' report into Queen Emma Primary, published earlier this month, followed an inspection in October.

The report said that in the category of leadership and management, the school was inadequate and that "leaders and governors are not tenacious enough in following up, monitoring, and recording incidents of concern".

Mr Lang, an author and university lecturer, is chair of governors at the local education authority-funded Queens Federation, which oversees both Queen Emma and the nearby Queen Edith Primary.

He claimed inspectors behaved in an "entirely inappropriate" manner, adding that the lead inspector refused to listen, stormed out of the room when questioned and threw evidence across the room.

Mr Lang said "it didn't feel like an inspection, it felt like an all-out assault on the school".

He said inspectors "went off with a substantial" amount of highly confidential data related to children and their families, not all of which had been returned.

"The only safeguarding problem that the inspection revealed was about the conduct of the Ofsted inspectors, because it was the Ofsted inspectors who broke the confidentiality of pupil data," he said.

"It was the Ofsted inspectors who left the children feeling bewildered and upset and distressed and it was the Ofsted inspectors who broke all the rules of confidentiality by discussing individual children in a crowded corridor."

He added: "The findings that the inspectors made were false, not only that they knew them to be false, but that did not affect anything and the report came out."

Dr Lang called for an independent process for schools to appeal against inspection ratings and for "root-and-branch reform" of Ofsted.

He said: "Had there been an independent appeals process, Mrs Perry in Reading would have had somewhere to take her case, but there wasn't.

"The only way you can take a case forward is to go into the expense of going to law, and Ofsted know it."

Ofsted's report into Queen Emma rated as "good" the quality of education, behaviour and attitudes of pupils, and early years education, but the category of personal development was "requires improvement".

With the leadership and management rating of inadequate, it resulted in an overall effectiveness rating of inadequate.

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