I have received the following letter, regarding this school, from the Director of Children’s Services

4 April 2013

Dear Councillor

I am writing to provide you with an update on the situation at Stanbridge Earls Independent School. This independent school was strongly criticised for perceived shortcomings in its safeguarding arrangements following a Tribunal judgement earlier this year. Since then there has been intensifying interest from the media, DfE and Ofsted. Whereas Hampshire County Council’s direct involvement as the “host” local authority for the school is limited, we have been called upon to take a number of actions and have also been involved in some of the media reactions, including most recently in the Sunday Times. It was in anticipation of those demands that we have treated this as a serious incident throughout with direct oversight from myself and Steve Crocker.

I should begin by reminding Members that the role of a host local authority in such cases needs to be clearly understood. As the host authority we have a general duty of safeguarding to all children resident in the county. We have no powers to register or regulate independent schools; those responsibilities are with DfE and Ofsted. We have a more specific duty to investigate but only if we have grounds to believe that a child is at risk of significant harm. Notwithstanding the seriousness of this incident, so far no such grounds have been established and we have not seen fit to implement specific child protection procedures. I am confident that position is appropriate so far.

As soon as we received the Tribunal judgement from Stanbridge Earls we initiated a strategy involving all of the local authorities who have children placed at the school, and including Ofsted and DfE. There are over fifty such local authorities involved. That led to the offer of an individual assessment to all of the children currently placed at the school (almost 200) by qualified social workers coordinated by Hampshire. That assessment included the invitation to children and parents to tell us of any concerns that they had. A significant number of parents politely declined the offer and made it clear that they are very happy with the school and its care and education of their children. This assessment exercise has now been concluded and gave us no grounds to institute child protection procedures on behalf of any child in placement. The exercise did indicate a limited number of issues of varying degrees of concern which accorded with the findings of the Ofsted inspection (see below).

Ofsted undertook an urgent inspection of the school after the tribunal findings had been made public. The school had previously been rated as “outstanding” in all categories including safeguarding. The new inspection did not give an overall grading but did identify some significant concerns about the development and application of safeguarding policies and practices, especially at a more strategic level. The school was required to submit an action plan to address these concerns and at the end of March DfE advised the school that the submitted action plan was not satisfactory. The school now has to review their actions and there will be a further Ofsted inspection before the end of May. This most recent development is a very serious one for the school as it could call into question the school’s future.

HCC Children’s Services have reviewed all of our responses to any contacts we have received with regard to children placed at the school over a five year period. Based on that exercise, I am satisfied that in every instance we took the appropriate action in line with our statutory responsibilities, though that is probably contrary to the opinions of two families who believe we should have taken different actions. We have had that review of our actions verified by the Independent Chair of the Hampshire Safeguarding Children Board and she agrees with our conclusions.

During the course of the publicity surrounding the case one additional person who previously attended the school has come forward to make an allegation about something that happened during her time at the school in 2008. This is being investigated by the police.

We have more recently taken a decision on balance that it would not be appropriate to remove Hampshire children from the school at this stage because of our understanding of the wishes of the children and families concerned and because of the lack of direct evidence to suggest any child is at risk of significant harm. That decision is based on the evidence before us. It will remain subject to review should any new evidence arise and pending further police and Ofsted inquiries. We have though agreed that we will make no new placements at the school until the current inquiries are resolved. We remain satisfied that this is a proportionate and evidence based position to hold and is certainly driven by our responsibilities to the welfare of the children concerned.

We have indicated that when the current inquiries are resolved we will ask the independently chaired Hampshire Safeguarding Children Board to conduct a general review of the background to this episode and the actions and responsibilities of all the agencies concerned, not least because the episode raises some important questions about safeguarding children in independent schools. We are aware that DfE are supportive of this proposed approach.

Yours sincerely

John Coughlan
Deputy Chief Executive & Director of Children’s Services

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