Steiner parents hire Mansfield to challenge Ofsted verdict

PARENTS of pupils at a private Steiner school have hired Michael Mansfield, one of Britain’s most prominent barristers, to challenge an Ofsted inspection that led to its closure.

The Wynstones School in Whaddon, Glos, shut in January this year following the report which said young pupils were “at risk of serious harm” in a “toxic culture”. Many parents of pupils at the independent boarding and day school said the report was unfair and did not accurately reflect teaching, discipline and welfare standards.

They have joined together to pay for leading human rights barrister Mr Mansfield to fight for them at a judicial review of the Ofsted findings in the Administrative Court.

The distinguished QC’S high-profile cases include representing Stephen Lawrence’s family, the victims of the Grenfell Tower and Hillsborough disasters, and Mohamed Fayed in the inquests into the deaths of Dodi Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Wynstones School was found by Ofsted to have “serious and widespread failures”.

A spokesman for the Wynstones Parent Initiative, a group of more than 50 parents formed to fight the Ofsted rulings, said: “The formal submission is a 14,300-word document, written by Michael Mansfield QC and the legal team, which sets out in exhaustive legal detail the grounds for the legal claim that we are making against Ofsted.”

A spokesman for Ofsted said: “This is a published report, which the school’s trustees accepted. Ofsted did not close the school and has no power to do so. The trustees of the school closed it.”

The school taught pupils aged three to 19.