Recommendation 45

The inquest into the death of Ruth Perry also raised concerns about the policy of judging a school ‘inadequate’ solely due to safeguarding. We accept that this only applies to a small number of schools and that Ofsted has taken some steps towards mitigating this issue through quicker re-inspections. Conducting more regular safeguarding audits should also help to reduce the number of schools to which this applies. However, it should never be the case that schools in this situation are judged as ‘inadequate’, and receive an academy order, solely due to minor administrative errors capable of being resolved within a short space of time.