| SPOTLIGHT |
Governors of a Steiner school are to launch a legal challenge to an Ofsted report that sent it into special measures.
Ofsted concluded the Steiner Academy Bristol required improvement after an inspection found it ‘inadequate’ on all the grounds examined, including quality of teaching, learning and assessment and outcomes for pupils.
The regulator said the school’s safeguarding “is not effective” and that its leaders and governors “have failed to ensure that pupils receive an acceptable standard of education”.
Ofsted made an unannounced inspection in November following a letter to it from Education Secretary Damian Hinds in which he demanded additional scrutiny of all Steiner schools citing safeguarding concerns.
Law firm Irwin Mitchell, acting for the governors, said: “Governors are concerned that the approach of Ofsted to Steiner schools has impacted on the fairness and independence of the inspection process.”
It said governors had launched a crowdfunding page to support a judicial review of the legality of Ofsted’s inspection process and report.
Governor Roy Douglas said: “While we take the report very seriously and recognise that improvements need to be made, we do not consider that the decision to place us in special measures was fair.”
Steiner schools implement the ideas of the Austrian educationalist Rudolf Steiner, and say that they “take account of the needs of the whole child – academic, physical, emotional and spiritual” and base their teaching on “an understanding of the relevance of the different phases of child development”.
Mark Smulian
