Ruth Perry - OFSTED ‘contributed to death of Headteacher’

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The Coroner today recorded that OFSTED contributed to Ruth Perry’s death.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67612233

An OFSTED inspector - ALAN DERRY - and his lack of professionalism, his lack of fairness, contributed to another human being’s death.

That is not an opinion that is a fact as recorded by the Coroner.

The Coroner also found that “parts of the ALAN DERRY’S inspection were conducted in a manner which lacked fairness”.

Regulators like ALAN DERRY exist to ensure fairness and proper procedures are followed by others. Why did ALAN DERRY allow his inspection to be unfair?

Our children, teachers, support staff and headteachers need immediate protection from an inspection process so appalling that is has contributed to a person’s death.

The Head of OFSTED has announced a day of training next week to fix this issue.

A day of training.

A day of training to help Inspectors not contribute to a person taking their own life. If an organisation needs training so that its employees don’t contribute to the deaths of others - then that organisation is not fit for purpose and its leadership, culture and moral compass are either absent or so woeful and professionally incompetent that they are simply negligent in the duties as a public body.

I believe a crowdfunding page is being established this week to possibly fund and pursue a case of Corporate Manslaughter against OFSTED now that their role in Ruth Perry’s death has been established.

How awful that a system of school inspection has become such a deranged quango. All power and no responsibility is such a toxic mix - and one here that has contributed to the death of another person.

What if another Head or Teacher takes their life in the coming weeks or months because of OFSTED - how awful would that be? How culpable would that make those who do not make seismic changes now.

Unprofessionalism of this level will not be cured by a day’s training and some tweaks.

Only complete and immediate overhaul - led by the SoS for Education and the Government can ensure this tragic event is not repeated in the coming months.

Heartbreaking read.

So sad that she felt she had no other option to get away from her utter despair.

How will we attract and keep people in teaching.

I didn't realise she had children.

I am beyond words, poor family.

It is horrifying that the bullying of an Ofsted inspector caused this. I feel so sad about it.

What an appalling case. It is extraordinarily that anyone could be put in such a position due to a stressful event at work. I appreciate that a negative OFSTED report must be very difficult but, ultimately, nobody died.

Why wasn’t Ruth given help & support when she needed it? Why was nobody there to help her keep things in some sort of rational perspective ?

@MargaritaThyme at that time you were not meant to discuss the OFSTED outcome with anyone who wasn’t in the feedback session.

They have relaxed the rules so, although the report is still highly confidential, you can tell a partner so you can have some support if you need it

The inspector is only a small part of the failing here.

If there hadn't been a single word grading with wide-ranging and disastrous outcomes for not only the school but also the community (see Ruth's concern about the impact on house prices) then the inspection wouldn't have had the impact that it had.

If Ruth had been able to confide in friends and family after the outcome (which up till now Ofsted have forbidden), that might have helped.

Those are systemic failings, and only one of them has been addressed.

Ofsted are not fit for purpose. It’s similar to the CQC inspection of the NHS. These bodies need an inspection themselves! It actually makes me so angry as I feel we have been failed by the education system in terms of our DD & this obsession with attendance (which her school fixated on despite her SEN diagnosis) seems to come directly from Ofsted.
What a tragic waste of Ruth Perry’s life.

i know this is a heightened emotion post but this simply isn’t true is it? There are many many professions which are incredibly scrutinised and high stress. Suicide rates aren’t particularly high in teachers compared to other groups.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/suicidebyoccupation/england2011to2015

BUT clearly things need to change because teachers are screaming out (and have been for years) that the process is hideous. AND to make it worse, the ofsted process isn’t even effective because there are plenty of actually inadequate schools where kids are not safeguarded properly and nothing is done about it. Not like you can just call ofsted and they’ll come straight in and welfare check a school. It’s pointless.

From your link "While the overall risk of suicide for those in the teaching and education profession was 31% lower than the national average, this masked some differences when looking at the most detailed level of occupation. During the period 2011 to 2015 there were 139 suicides among teaching and educational professionals and almost three-quarters (73%) of these, or 102 suicides, were for those recorded as primary and nursery schoolteachers. When focusing on primary and nursery schoolteachers, the risk of suicide was 42% higher than the national average.

That seems alarming.

Nimbles, I agree. There's no doubt that there is a direct correlation between this high stakes inspection protocol and poor outcomes for pupils with SEN, and perhaps neurodivergent young people in particular. Schools cease to be responsive to pupil need and instead become reactive to inspection frameworks, and are thus incentivised to encourage, arm-twist and coerce deregistration of learners whose attendance or academic records 'look bad'. This is unlawful, of course.
But I am certain that ND pupils who struggle in the mainstream environment come a cropper as an immediate result of Ofsted's reign of terror and the immense pressure it puts on teachers and school leaders.

@noblegiraffe that is alarming.

RIP Ruth Perry. From one ex-school leader who decided never to go through an inspection again despite it being ‘good’. I knew it was no good for me and my life and my family.

And I will never ever like a school celebrating a good or outstanding outcome. It takes the good and outstanding ones to shrug at their outcome to show it shouldn’t matter and Ofsted is not worth the paper they write their copy and paste from a bank of comments reports on.

Ofsted needs to be got rid of. Not 'tweaked' with a bit of extra training and platitudes. It's systemic failings mean that total reform is needed. Of course schools need to be monitored, safeguarding checks need to be made and good quality standards upheld. No one is denying that. But Ofsted fails spectacularly in making any meaningful positive impact.

The single word judgement is a particularly appalling feature - it really tells parents, staff and the wider public nothing. A school like Ruth Perry's - where according to the report, teaching and learning were great, parents happy, the children felt safe, but there were some procedural failings with some staff being uncertain of the precise process to record safeguarding concerns - how in gods name does it help to slap an 'inadequate' label on the school and then disappear? Of course those failings need to be addressed- which they could have been, in a matter of weeks, while withholding any kind of overall headline judgement. The reality was that this was a very good school with a successful well liked head teacher and where there were some procedural errors which needed to be addressed. There was no evidence of children not being safe, it was a case of some processes not being known correctly by some staff.

It would have been far better for everyone - staff, children and parents- if these errors had been addressed in a supportive and rapid way, so that Ruth Perry could get on with running the school. How in gods name does it help anyone that in a situation like this, rather than supporting a school to improve, a summary judgement is slapped on the school which can then take literally years to change, even though the actual errors might be sorted within weeks? All within the context of the head teacher and other senior staff being silenced for literally weeks until a report is published?

Ofsted inspectors have to work within a framework so technically, yes, Alan Derry had no choice but to follow the rules and make this judgement. Which then leads to the question: what sort of people choose to work within such an appalling, not fit for purpose organisation? Knowing that they're handing down judgements that are flawed because they fail to show the reality of what goes in a school? I imagine many of us know the answer to that .... sadly many of these people have a bullying, confrontational approach. Or they're the 'tick box' teachers who were never inspirational in the classroom themselves, and couldn't wait to get out, but see it as some sort of achievement to go and work within the toxic Ofsted organisation.

So the response to this is one day of 'training' for Ofsted lead inspectors. Utter insult. Ofsted needs to be shut down and replaced with a robust but supportive process staffed by proper professionals, not by box ticking bullies who get off on humiliating people who've actually got the integrity to still be working in schools.

Given the teacher shortage, and shortage of new applicants for teacher training it is time for the teaching unions to show their strength. In NSW (Australia) the teaching unions negotiated eliminating inspection altogether many years ago. Circumstances were different, and involved the need for teachers in distant rural areas, but it shows how powerful a union can be.
The really truly sad thing about Ruth Perry's inspection was that the inadequate judgement for safeguarding appeared to be associated with the paperwork rather than any actual incidents.

@Redburnett yes, it's very clear that there was no evidence of children not being safeguarded. It was a failing in the record keeping process by some members of staff. Which of course is important but which could have been rectified rapidly.

I wonder if Alan Derry, the Lead Inspector and the other Inspectors, Gavin Evans and Clare Wilkins, are still inspecting schools?

This is so incredibly sad. Unfortunately OFSTED is only part of the toxic place schools have become. Teachers are leaving the profession in their droves, me included. The job is not good for my mental health. I can no longer cope.

The irony of an organisation thinking a one day training course will fix a fundamentally broken system and yet also thinking that some staff not understanding a reporting procedure equals 4 years of being inadequate...

Seems like they aren't putting themselves through the rigour they expect of others. I wonder why?!

I'm a childminder and only care for a handful of children. We have ofsted in our home for 6-8 hours, for non stop scrutiny and questioning our practise, as well as physically looking at our entire home, including teenage bedrooms.

You spend your whole life thinking "what would ofsted say", or worrying about them turning up. If you don't get good, then you can't have funded children or tax free childcare etc. Your business can be over in an afternoon, on the say so of one person, who finds fault with something that the next inspector would say was fine.

After my inspection, I felt useless and incapable for months afterwards.

I can't even imagine how much this is amplified when you're in charge of a school.

I know the focus is quite rightly on schools with this news story and as a former teacher my heart breaks for Ruth Perry and her family. But I also wanted to mention the enormous pressure Ofsted put on local authorities. I’ve recently left a role where I supported inspections. By the time I left I counted 8 different possible inspections children’s services could be subject to at any given time - social care, SEND, adoption, further ed, multi-agency etc. Massive frameworks needing so much planning to be ready for.

Where I worked had previously had an inadequate judgement and very experienced staff talked about the residual trauma of that judgement on those who experienced it.

As someone posted above, everything becomes about preparing for/responding to the inspection, not getting on with the work.

We used to comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Ofsted wouldn’t call over a half term but in October two LAs locally got inspection calls in the holidays - cue everyone being pulled back in from leave, having to arrange childcare, or for those who’d already got away, having to log in remotely to support staff preparing for inspection rather than take their much needed break. That is totally unreasonable and Ofsted would absolutely have known the impact their call would have. But they did it anyway.

Their conduct throughout Ruth Perry’s life and death has been appalling. Pausing inspections for a day to issue guidance to lead inspectors is a joke and an insult. This whole thing has made me so angry. I’ve left my role now and no longer have the Monday dread that hung over me waiting for the call, but I feel for colleagues in all fields who still go through it each week.

This is so tragic, appalling and inhumane.

Is Alan Derry still in post? He needs to go, criminal case and the whole system with government support needs to change. As pp said, it should be about support not about hitting people with a stick.

It really is sickening and archaic.

Can I ask, is it really the end of the world if a school gets an extremely bad rating from Ofsted even if it’s undeserved? I’ve read the notes that she wrote and I feel so bad for her. How does a negative Ofsted visit make one feel that way?

I’ve never worked in a school so I don’t quite understand it all tbh

I think that's too far, what do you think he should be charged with? Even if he did go too far by who's standard? I would've thought that if ofsted was too soft parents would be complaining its assessments can't be trusted, children are at risk etc.

I think this has all gone too far, do we want ofsted to be toothless? It's tragic what happened but I read it was about safeguarding reporting process isn't that really concerning if a school is actually inadequate what about the children who may be at risk?

Criminal case against OFSTED and Alan Derry needs removing from post. I don’t think that’s “too far”.

@RepetitiveMotion ok what charge against ofsted? What "criminal case" would that be? And I don't think employees should be dismissed because the masses cry out for it, there should be a proper independent investigation and people should remember that ofsted safeguards some of the most vulnerable members of society, inspections should not be easy

@RepetitiveMotion completely agree, 100% hope that a corporate criminal charge can be brought against Ofsted as an outcome of all this. Obviously criminal charges can't be brought against an individual, and I can see that Alan Derry was acting within the framework - but it's the framework which is utterly flawed and harmful.

That said, the commentary that's now on record about the inspection - that it wasn't respectful or fair, - and actually singling Alan Derry out for criticism of his behaviour - well, there may not be a case for individual charges but my god, I wouldn't want to live with that on my conscience. And the other man and the woman who put their names to that inspection report should be utterly ashamed. I can't see how anyone with integrity can continue to work within Ofsted. There's no chance of things changing - it needs to go and be replaced by a proper professional process