The education secretary gave Durham Free School (DFS) until 3 February to make representations showing why it should not have its funding agreement ended. Nicky Morgan now has the school’s response: a detailed explanation of why the DfE’s threat to close the school is unfair, disproportionate and wrongheaded. The academy trust has also served notice that it may apply for judicial review.
A critique of Ofsted’s behaviour throughout this affair has also been drawn up, saying that the chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, may have misled a commons committee.
When MPs raised concerns about Ofsted inspectors asking children inappropriate questions about what lesbians ‘did’ or whether they had ever felt they might be in the ‘wrong body’, Sir Michael said the claims had been ‘thoroughly investigated’ and were ‘false’. However, DFS maintains that Ofsted had not contacted the school or parents, had taken no statements from complainants or witnesses – in short, have made no proper investigation at all. The school is now raising a further serious allegation – that an Ofsted inspector kept a boy in a room with no window, and having sent away the member of staff looking after him, proceeded to ask inappropriate questions about whether he had ‘lost his virginity’.
The school also says Ofsted wrongly claimed academic progress at the school was inadequate, basing its judgment on a sample of exercise books, but ignoring results of tests taken under exam conditions that demonstrated superb progress and achievement.
DFS complains that the whole inspection process has been Kafkaesque, with both ministers’ and Ofsted’s judgment coloured by mysterious allegations made by a whistleblower (suggested to be the former headteacher in the solicitors' letter to Nicky Morgan) that have never been put to the school for rebuttal. The chairman of governors says he simply doesn't know what the accusations are, though he senses they have something to do with Christian 'religious extremism'. There have been other sinister aspects to this murky affair including false information about teaching staff allegedly being passed on to civil servants at DfE by a Labour MP and circulated by education staff in the local authority (which is ideologically hostile to free schools).
Nicky Morgan (and by extension, David Cameron) must now decide whose side the government is on. Will they side with the parents and children who have mounted such a spirited defence of their school?
Will they insist on due process and fair play? Or are they prepared to allow the abuse of bureaucratic power destroy a brave educational initiative? Nicky Morgan will need political courage to admit she may have been too hasty, or even plain wrong. If she has it, good. But if she cannot go that far, the very least she should now do is to recuse herself from the case and hand any decision on the school’s future over to another minister who can take a fresh look. After all, her own party's supporters will be wondering: what is the point of a Conservative-led coalition government if its ministers will not do the right thing?