Dear Ms Thorn

Your request for information

Thank you for your email dated 10 August 2009 sent to the Ofsted enquiries mailbox ([email address]) in which you requested information concerning serious case reviews (SCRs) sent to Ofsted from local authorities in England.

After an initial analysis of your request, we asked if you wished to refine it, as not all the information you requested was held by Ofsted, in the time period specified. Ofsted has only received information related to SCRs since 1 April 2007. 

You replied on 21 August, revising your request as follows:

Summary of response

Ofsted holds most of the information you have requested. However we do not have full details of the schooling of all children who were subject to a SCR.

Details on the number and age breakdown of SCRs are provided with this letter. The Freedom of Information Act, however, only requires Ofsted to provide information where the cost of locating and extracting it falls within an “appropriate limit”. Therefore for details of schooling Ofsted has only been able to provide you with the information that could be located and extracted within this limit. This decision is explained below.

Information Held

We have dealt with your request in accordance with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. The first requirement of the Act is for Ofsted to confirm whether it holds information of the description provided in your request.

a) I can confirm that Ofsted holds the number of SCRs sent to it from 1 April 2007 to date.

b) I can also confirm that Ofsted holds the age(s) of the children involved in each serious case review at the time of the incident. It is, therefore, possible to allocate these into each of the cohorts you have specified.

c) I can only confirm, within the cost limits provided by the FOI Act, that Ofsted holds some of information related to the schooling of children subject to a SCR.

Whilst information about the ages of the children at the time of an incident is recorded in every case, similar recording requirements do not extend to the location of educational provision. Educational provision is contextual information, held only in reference to the specifics of an incident and when it is pertinent to the child's history. 

Schooling details are not one of the areas Ofsted is required to capture, record or analyse, as part of its duties associated with evaluating serious case reviews. It may be the case that, where Ofsted obtains records concerning incidents (for the purposes of evaluation or notification) that references to schooling are included and are relevant to the case history. Nevertheless this is not an area where an automatic record is generated for each case.

This is because details of serious incidents which result in SCRs are recorded by Ofsted at the `point of notification' on the child protection database (CPD), a recording system administered by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF). Details of schooling are not required fields in this database.

Please find below the information that Ofsted holds relating to your request which we are able to disclose.

a) The number of Serious Case reviews sent to Ofsted from 1 April 2007 to 26 August 2009 is: 291

b) The break-down of age cohorts is as follows:

0 - 4: 178

5 - 10: 33

11-18: 68

Multiple children in each case: 12

c) From reviewing the 291 SCR evaluation letters, we are able to provide the following information combining age cohorts and type of education provision, where known, of the children involved in the SCRs:

In only 19 instances were Ofsted able to positively determine the schooling of children.

In processing your request, Ofsted has been mindful of section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, which provides a cost limit to public authorities for locating and providing information that is holds.

The Appropriate Limit: Section 12 of the FOI Act

Section 12(1) of the FOI Act provides that a public authority is not obliged:

“to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The appropriate limit has been set for government departments at £600 (which equates to 24 working hours). In addition, a public authority is not obliged (s.12(2)) to confirm whether all the requested information is held where:

“the estimated cost of complying with that (…) alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

Serious case reviews submitted to Ofsted for evaluation are lengthy documents comprising of several sections and chapters. The total number of pages in a typical SCR file can be in excess of one hundred pages.

We have calculated that the time required to analyse all of this information, locate and then extract schooling details in each SRC file, would exceed the appropriate limit. We estimate that it would take on average between 30-40 minutes to review the documentation within each SCR in order to confirm if schooling data is held and to then record that fact (if it is actually provided within this information).

We have however endeavoured to find the most efficient means to locate the information we hold concerning schooling. To do this we have manipulated our databases to produce reports showing that, of the 291 SCRs Ofsted received by 26 August 2009, 112 of these involved children of compulsory school age. We reviewed each of the evaluation letters Ofsted has produced in relation to these SCRs, as evaluation letters usefully summarise each case. By concentrating our resources on these 112 SCR evaluation letters alone, we were able to acquire some of the data (for 19 cases) within the appropriate limit.

Gathering the information in this manner has enabled us to present some meaningful data to you in the table above. I acknowledge that Ofsted have only been able to undertake a limited search of its information holdings, but this has utilised a consistent information source (the evaluation letters).

For the remaining 93 cases, where no positive details have been found, the only additional work Ofsted can undertake is to review the full SCR documentation, to see if these revealed any further details. However this task could only incorporate a partial amount of the SCR files that we still hold (which are mainly the most recent cases) within the appropriate limit. To continue this task would distort the data already obtained, because it would be skewed towards the most recent SCRs and it would derive from two sources.

Our calculations upon the hours it took to provide the data can be summarised as follows:

My conclusion is that Ofsted cannot confirm whether or not it holds all the schooling data requested, nor provide it to you within the appropriate limit described within the FOI Act. I trust that this letter adequately explains Ofsted's reasons why this is the case.

If you feel we have not dealt with your request satisfactorily, you can contact me at 0207 421 5634 or via [email address] or to see if these matters can be resolved informally.

Alternatively, if you remain dissatisfied with Ofsted's response or the handling of your request you may request a formal internal review. In order to do this, please write to the following address, explaining what areas of Ofsted's response you are unhappy with:

Email: [email address] or write to:

Head of Information Rights

Legal Services Division

Ofsted

Aviation House

125 Kingsway

London, WC2B 6SE

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you also have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision as to whether or not Ofsted have complied with its obligations under the FOI Act with respect to your request. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

FOI Case Reception Unit

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

ANNE ORTON HMI

Divisional Manager,

Cross-remit Safeguarding

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