Top Steiner school told to close over child safety
Move comes after damning Ofsted reports and staff member’s sacking
BRITAIN’S flagship Steiner school has been ordered to close amid fears over child safety, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley had already been banned by the Department for Education (DfE) from admitting any new pupils, following damning Ofsted inspections which uncovered a series of safeguarding failings.
It comes after Denis McCarthy, a teacher, was sacked from the school for gross misconduct.
“He was the most powerful person in the school, he had a large following,” a source close to the institution said. “The school did everything that they could to protect him – minimising or dismissing concerns, and deleting safeguarding emails.”
The development raises questions about the 34 other Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland.
Steiner schools base their curriculum on the spiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, called anthroposophy. A Steiner education emphasises creativity and the importance of rearing “freethinking individuals”.
The school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, charges up to £9,570-a-year in fees.
It has issued a public apology to children and their families for “real and serious failings going back several years”, acknowledging that it failed to act on “repeated concerns raised by parents” over safeguarding. The school was notified in July of the Education Secretary’s intention to remove it from the independent schools’ register, a decision which the school is now appealing.
The drastic move, which is only used as a last resort by ministers, follows a spate of highly critical inspections over the past 18 months.
Parental concerns about pupil welfare triggered an emergency inspection last March by the School Inspectorate Service (SIS), after which the DfE ordered Ofsted to take over.
Following the inspection, a school newsletter described the inspectors as “aliens” and told parents that there was much “shuffling of feet” when they asked to speak to the school’s head.
Steiner schools do not typically have a head teacher, but are run by a committee or group of teachers.
In November, Ofsted inspectors found “serious weaknesses in the school’s management of safeguarding”. They added that “several” of 39 formal complaints received from parents from the previous school year alone related to safeguarding.
Inspectors said “serious allegations of a child protection nature” were already being investigated by other authorities. In December, Ofsted said the school must “urgently” addresses weaknesses in its management of safeguarding issues.
Then an inspection earlier this year found a series of underlying flaws. Tim Byford, the school’s new principal, apologised in a statement on its website and added: “The new leadership of the school is putting into effect a strategy to address all of the issues identified by Ofsted and others, working closely with parents, staff and all stakeholders.”