Ofsted<\/a> has now announced that it has launched a section 8 ungraded inspection of the school. Inspectors attended its site today.<\/p>\nIt is highly unusual for Ofsted to announce it is inspecting a school while the visit is taking place.<\/p>\n
Chief inspector Martyn Oliver said: \u201cI was concerned to learn that a school may have been intimidated into cancelling a visit from their local MP. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am troubled by the message this sends to children \u2013 especially children from the Jewish community. Those of us privileged enough to be working in education have a professional and moral duty to stand against discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver said he tasked inspectors last week to \u201cconsider evidence, speak with the school and determine whether further action was needed\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have concluded the threshold for an inspection was met and they are at the school today. The school was informed this morning and I am very grateful to them for their openness in engaging with the inspectors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ofsted had told Cabot a section 8 inspection was \u201cnecessary due to potential concerns\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the current evidence does not suggest pupils are at significant risk of harm, there is considerable public interest in the school\u2019s arrangements and inspection will provide an independent evaluation for parents and the public,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Concerns about student safety\u2019<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Cabot Learning Federation said: \u201cThe promotion of inclusion and rejection of discrimination are enshrined in CLF\u2019s core values, and all staff are expected to embody these values in their behaviour \u2013 both inside and outside of school\u201d.<\/p>\n
CLF has commissioned an external review into its staff training and development to \u201craise awareness of discrimination of any kind, including race, religion or ethnic origin\u201d, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take our responsibilities to educate young people about British values extremely seriously, which is why we invited Mr Egan to speak to our students in the first place. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst we took the decision to postpone the visit due to concerns about student safety and the disruption to their education from the planned protest, a date for the rescheduled visit had already been confirmed by Mr Egan\u2019s office. This was long before any of the most recent concerns were raised.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bristol branch of the NEU celebrated the visit\u2019s postponement on social media at the time, but the union\u2019s general secretary insisted this week it \u201ccertainly wasn\u2019t a position of the national union that this MP shouldn\u2019t attend\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4\u2019s Political Thinking, he said: \u201cMy understanding of the situation is that there were some concerns raised to the local representative, and there were parents raising concerns over the MP\u2019s attendance, and the school took it upon themselves to postpone that visit, and it has been reinstated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ofsted has announced it has inspected a school that postponed a visit by its local MP because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-373646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}