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Update
The following message was posted on the evening of 27th January 2021, on the Wynstones Parents Legal Action Facebook page, which was more actively used last year during the case against Ofsted, but which is still referenced my many people regularly. Within a day it had reached nearly 50 people, some of whom have responded with likes or replies. We share it here as well:
One year ago today, with a ‘gun’ of Ofsted at their heads, Wynstones School trustees made the decision to close the school with immediate effect. Tomorrow, 28th January, there was no more school. Already on the very next day, teachers were not allowed contact with pupils or parents (and vice versa), even though they were in the middle of main lessons, class projects, class plays, and the whole stream of continuing activities which is part of everyday life of a teacher in a class at school. It was a cruel action, a travesty unheard of. There was no closure possible.
As you know, a group of parents decided to take Ofsted to task, with a valiant legal action. The details of what happened, with more now to be added, are preserved on the website www.wynsted-matters.site. Please do have a look!
This little posting is in memory of that, with the hope that such an inhuman action may never happen again, and with every good wish, one year on, for all the teachers and pupils and families who were affected.
This evening [27 Jan 2021], many of the former teachers lit a candle, in a moment of memory, of reflection, of hope for other Waldorf schools, and hope for a more humane system of education in this country.
Following is a brief synopsis on the outcome of the Wynstones parents’ legal case against Ofsted, for which we have received a great deal of support and positive publicity – not least from all those who have supported our case with great financial generosity in these difficult times. We are very grateful to everyone who has travelled with us on this challenging and sometimes painful process, and we are aware of the extent to which our case has struck a chord.
When we set out, we sought some redress for the outrageous and irresponsible overnight closure of a much-loved school. There is no functional or effective complaints or oversight process for OFSTED as an organisation, and our lawyers advised us that the only realistic remedy was Judicial Review, which needed to be submitted within a 3-month time-limit. Our aim was to challenge the closure of the school by the DfE, however we were advised that although the DfE sent a letter to the Trustees ‘requiring immediate closure’ [quote, unquote] and threatening prison and unlimited fines for non-compliance, the DfE still maintained that in a strictly legal sense, they did not actually close the school themselves and were therefore not culpable.
We then looked at the case against OFSTED as being ‘irrational’ in its conclusions on ‘safeguarding’, for just a few academic weeks before these judgements were made, OFSTED found the school to be compliant in ‘safeguarding’ terms. It added great difficulty to our case that OFSTED were not willing to release the original reports upon which their inspection conclusions were based until the last moment.
On the advice of our legal team, we have recently been advised to withdraw the case, as it would be very hard to fight purely on those narrowly defined ‘rational’ grounds – whatever we might think of the underlying reality of what the report alleged, which in our view remains highly contestable. Indeed, our expert consultant on safeguarding law still felt that we may well have grounds to challenge Ofsted’s judgements around safeguarding. However, time constraints, along with the level of restriction of access to the confidential documents, were such that it was made logistically impossible for us to pursue the case any further.
We’re sorry to be bringing you this difficult news; but we want to thank you again for supporting and having faith in us. In taking on Ofsted-DfE in the way we have done, we have also given a strong message that our education will no longer be a compliant punch-bag – and that message alone to these organisations will be of an inestimable value for the future. See the website link www.wynsted-matters.site for more information.
Hoping this finds you well.
Kind regards
Wynstones Legal Action Core Group
Richard House’s new book has been recently published, giving a detailed analysis and refutation of many of the safeguarding arguments used by Ofsted in the Wynstones case but also used by them for judging many schools:
PUSHING BACK TO OFSTED: Safeguarding and the Legitimacy of Ofsted’s Inspection Judgements – A Critical Case Study
published by InterActions, April 2020, Stroud.
Available now! from Wynstones Press or Amazon! (click for direct link and to buy).
See the link Pushing Back to Ofsted for more information and for a review of the book by a former long-standing lead Ofsted inspector!!
Three letters from parents
Three letters from parents of children at Wynstones School, explaining what the closure has meant for them and their families
The first letter:
The recent sudden closure of Wynstones School in Gloucestershire, England had caused indescribable confusion, disorder and has thrown my own and indeed most families I know into turmoil, insecurity and distress.
It started in the Spring of last year when the school was inspected by Ofsted and got an “inadequate” rating in every area which was inspected. This sent waves of horror, distress and anger across the whole school. It meant that many changes were made, new staff were employed and at the next inspection which took place at the beginning of this school year it was found that the school was much improved, safe for the children and while still “inadequate” in many areas – 7 of the 12 inspection standards had now been met. However the inadequate rating had taken it’s toll. It seems to me that staff have felt overworked and undervalued, there was strife with managers and complaints from parents increased. There was then an emergency inspection with no prior notice given to the school on the 21st and 22nd of January. It feels as if a cloud has been covering the school for the last year or so, there has been anger, upset and discord which has enhanced the problems being faced.
On Monday 27th of January in the evening at around 7.30 pm we received an email from the school stating that,
“the Department for Education (DfE) requires the immediate closure of Wynstones School until the DfE are satisfied sufficient steps have been taken to improve safeguarding and ensure all children are kept safe”
So with approximately 13 hours notice (less for some who did not see the email immediately) and no further information, we were left with the necessity to find childcare for our children, attempt to explain to them why they could not attend school and deal with the shock and trauma which followed.
We have been given vague indications of some safeguarding incidents in which procedure was not followed properly and and that there had been contact from some parents directly to the DfE to complain about the school which is why they had called the emergency inspection the previous week. I cannot comment on these incidents as I know very little about them – but what I can say is that while Ofsted and the DfE claim that children were at risk from potential safeguarding incidents – in closing the school they have actually created safeguarding incidents as parents who work struggle to find childcare for their children who are upset and confused. Some parents have had to leave their children at home alone, or they have been left to wander around town with no adult supervision and some (including myself) have had to take a sudden drastic reduction in working hours with the resultant pay cut.
I do not question that there were improvements needed within the school, but I do know that my children were happy there. My eldest who is nearly 12 sometimes finds it difficult to get up in the morning – but I would only have to mention to him that if he didn’t get up he would have to stay home from school – and he would quickly get dressed. He even wanted to go in if he was ill… . My middle child who is a very dreamy individual has been allowed to be himself and feel understood and respected and my youngest adores school, loves his teacher and comes out of his classroom after school with a shining happy face, full of enthusiasm for what he has learnt.
As a parent this has been a very heart-warming experience. Every one of my children’s teachers understand and care deeply for my children. I have great respect for them and have always been able to meet with them at school or even phone them up at their homes to discuss my children and their well-being. Now the teachers have been told by Ofsted and the DfE that they are ‘contaminated’ they are not allowed to set work for the children they used to teach and we are not allowed to contact them and are discouraged from acknowledging them if we pass them in the street, it is cruel.
It is heartbreaking to stay at home from work and see how difficult it is for my children. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that all three of my children have been traumatised by the sudden closure of the school. It has robbed them of much of their innocence and their inherent trust in the world. When Ofsted came to the school they kept my 11 year-old’s class inside throughout the entire break time (outside playtime) to ask them if they felt safe at school. When he came home he was completely incensed that they had lost their outside playtime and confused as to why these inspectors had to ask them all these questions about feeling safe at school. He is now finding it difficult to sleep, he is waking up at 4am unable to fall asleep again, he has lost his appetite, is angry and bored, lonely and missing his friends. He has heard people talking about low academic standards and is now anxious that he is not good enough academically.
As we have no idea when or even if the school will be able to reopen we have now made the difficult decision to apply for a secondary school place for him as we feel he really needs the social interaction and routine. He was so keen to go back to Wynstones but is now saying he doesn’t – even if it reopens, and I sense that this is a sort of self preservation against a similar trauma happening again.
On the county council “in year school admissions guidance booklet 2019 – 2020” it quite clearly states that,
“… moving your child to another school can affect them in many ways and the decision should not be taken without careful thought. The local authority firmly believes that continuity and stability in a child’s education is very important and that a change of school should only be made if it is deemed to be in your child’s best interests. Many things that worry parents and children can be sorted out without the need to move school. Moving school… can adversely affect your child’s education.” (www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/2091510/in-year-admissions- guidance-booklet-2019-20.pdf)
It seems that the government (or local authority?) were unable to take their own advice in this case and indeed are guilty of extreme hypocrisy.
The exam students have been left in the lurch with most struggling to find places at other schools and colleges in order to be able to take their exams. Some in fact may be unable to complete all their exams as they cannot transfer their coursework from one place to another. So careers and college or university places are being compromised or put on hold.
This situation has affected us to such an extent that I feel in all good conscience that I cannot just stand by and look on while doing nothing. We have had our right to the freedom to choose the type of education for our children taken away from us. And it has been brutal – we were given no warning and no provision was made for any of the children involved. Waldorf education is an education towards freedom and so I believe it is worth fighting for.
From David Fuller –
The Closure of the school completely turned our lives upside-down. We had chosen this education and our son had chosen it too, recognising that the curriculum met him on an emotional level as well as intellectually. It fed his imagination as well as his artistic sensibility. We are based in Bristol, living only 5 minutes from Bristol
Steiner School, but this school has gone through financial difficulties and scaled down to become a Primary School only. The possibility of a school bus to Wynstones was nothing short of a miracle for us, because it meant our son could continue accessing a Steiner Education without our having to relocate.
When the news first came through that the School had closed, we tried to put a brave face on things, hoping it would re-open quickly and treating the closure like a few snow days. With so much uncertainty as time has gone on, we have resorted to homeschooling, using tutors. My wife and I both work full time. I leave the house at 7 am and return at 6 pm. It feels like I am coming home to begin another work shift at the moment. Coordinating home schooling with tutors and 2 other families that are in the same boat, with cancellations, re-jigging, explanations to tutors that have never taught to a Steiner Curriculum before, just what we are looking for, all takes time, as do payments and settlements of payments between parents.
The behaviour of Ofsted towards Wynstones has caused me to question their agenda more seriously than I had previously. In my opinion, schools are” centres of culture” where children’s lives are enriched and they are given the resilience they need to get through the storms of adult life. For such cultural institutions to thrive, they need freedom. People need to be given trust and each and every school needs to evolve organically to become the school that it is destined to become. Steiner Schools are especially good at evolving in this way and Wynstones was no exception. Modern life was throwing new challenges at the school and the school needed to work out its response to these challenges. Governmental institutions should have been supporting, strengthening and encouraging Wynstones as it faced these challenges, not undermining and weakening it.
Successive governments, since the 1980’s have washed their hands of any direct responsibility to ensure that standards improve in schools, It is no longer the government’s fault if our schools are not providing an education of excellence; it is the individual school’s fault. Each school is expected to fit into a “one-size-fits-all” framework, despite having a very different intake of students and different histories and serving different communities. They are then judged through league tables that compare them as if comparing like-for-like. It is a market approach to education. It’s a production line and measurements provide quality-control. The trouble is, many of the qualities that make up a valuable educational experience can’t be measured; the true impact of any educational experience can only really be evaluated fully by looking at the whole life of an individual.
In my life, I’ve come to conclude that so much that comes from above (Governmental dictates) has the effect of ‘dumbing-down’ not raising standards. In Steiner Schools we learn to differentiate between the ‘essential’ and ‘the urgent’. If we take care of the essential, which includes studying at a profound level the nature of the human being; if we are self-reflective; if we develop our artistic abilities – we create harmony around us and learning takes place. If we don’t do these things, we start to chase about trying to put out fires. With such a high emphasis on ‘safeguarding’ we allow the lowest (basest) qualities of mankind – abuse of children – to dictate the agenda; if too much in time and resources are dedicated to this, there is little energy left to devote to the essential.
Once ‘Safeguarding’ established its place as the ‘be all and end all’, it became very difficult to question its position; who doesn’t want our children’s safety to be put as: of the highest importance? Thus was Ofsted’s power as the supreme judge of every educational standard, cemented and made unquestionable.
David Fuller
(Parent of Class 8 Wynstones student), Based in Bristol.
From another parent, who wishes to remain anonymous
You do not need to know very much about Steiner education in general to gain a balanced view of the Wynstones School closure on January 27 2020. But it would be useful to know a little about the school itself.
This was in many respects a mainstream school. It offered standard GCSEs and A levels, and its exam results were creditable: not exceptional, but good, and had remained consistently good for decades. Its faintly ramshackle but solid external appearance (Pre-Raphaelite meets Bauhaus) and loose organizational structure belied a singularly effective and adaptable institution. The staff were outstanding, and, for such a small school, were able to offer a very broad range of subjects. This was only possible because their wages were far too modest, and because parents were extremely supportive. Perhaps more importantly, pastoral care was superb. This was the main reason we sent our two children to Wynstones, in preference to several other possible schools (state and independent) that would have been far more convenient in terms of geography, wider family relationships, and expenditure. We had close professional knowledge of several of these other schools being plagued by bullying despite outstanding OFSTED reports.
Over the course of its history, the curriculum and administration at Wynstones have been periodically overhauled, responding to the views of pupils, parents and staff. One of those turning points emerged about two years ago, at a time when overall numbers were slightly boosted by the influx of some pupils from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, where a Steiner school was shut down by OFSTED in July 2018. The various reforms under consideration were wholly unconnected to OFSTED (new classes, additional accreditation, bursaries and so forth). Naturally, the closure of Kings Langley was common knowledge, but at that time the general feeling was: “Wynstones is different, so it won’t happen here”. Over subsequent months, many of us started to feel less confident.
In recent years, we have made friends with roughly 30 to 40 Wynstones families (60 to 80 parents). None has any first-hand knowledge (let alone adverse experience) of safeguarding issues in general, let alone the issues cryptically alluded to in OFSTED’s 2020 closure report. None of their children felt unsafe before the final series of OFSTED inspections began. Nor did our two children. The school had been up and running since the 1930s, smoothly changing gear as the world around it evolved. It knew what it was about, where it was going, and it did a good job. In the past, school inspections had been welcome at Wynstones, not least because the consequent positive feedback served as convenient publicity, helping to attract a handful of pupils/families from other regions and overseas.
However, after the adverse OFSTED report of January 2019 (on boarding provision), and with further OFSTED intervention over subsequent weeks and months, the atmosphere gradually changed. Teachers were less relaxed, petty rules were enforced less flexibly. The grounds included trees with huge low branches that generations of children had clambered over. No longer. One teacher would suddenly stand in for another during staff meetings held to discuss OFSTED strictures. All of this was highly unsettling for the children.
Clearly a small school’s very limited resources were being hurled into baffling efforts to interpret and act upon OFSTED’s formulaic requirements, the better to demonstrate conformity. And survive. The younger children sensed it. The older children knew it. Those pupils who had experienced the Kings Langley closure now desperately wanted to believe that their current school would not suffer the same fate.
During OFSTED’s campaign of attrition, the school’s shiny and expensive new perimeter security fence was erected, painfully emblematic of the pressure now exacting its toll on staff and pupil morale. In our children’s view, there was no conceivable reason for the fence, or any of the other associated changes, above and beyond the word “safeguarding”, that unimpeachable yet curiously amorphous concept of safety, or security.
At its simplest, any need for security must logically imply insecurity. When a child encounters the concept of safeguarding, she or he inevitably wants to know what it might be that they are to be kept safe from. The theoretical possibilities are legion, but no parent or teacher wants to alarm the curious child by naming and explaining them all. Unsatisfyingly evasive answers ensue.
For our children and their friends, the sequence of events was as follows. First, security and safeguarding measures were introduced, amid the haste of a barely disguised OFSTED-induced institutional panic. Then, and only then, did the feelings of insecurity duly follow. For any child suffering from anxiety — even fleetingly, in the normal course of learning and growing — the new fence was a profoundly unwelcome encirclement of their beloved school. It was the most obvious symbol of unsettling everyday changes explicitly induced by OFSTED over several school terms. For months, aspirational and emollient rhetoric notwithstanding, we and many other parents began to suspect that OFSTED’s interventions did not and never would safeguard our children’s welfare in any fundamental non-procedural sense. Then overnight, on January 27, 2020, the school was shut, throwing us to the four winds. Our worst fear was confirmed, and OFSTED revealed itself to have been not merely unconstructive but toxically detrimental to our children’s welfare.