Dear Ms Darling
I am emailing to confirm that we have received your Freedom of Information
request for:

1) 'a monthly breakdown of numbers of teachers and teaching assistants
who left Steiner Academy Bristol between January 2018 and January 2019.'
2) 'the number of pupils, teachers and teaching assistants that have
left Steiner Academy Bristol between January 2019 and November 2019.

Please provide a monthly breakdown and indicate if pupil, teacher or
teaching assistant.'
&
3) 'provide all communications (letters, emails including attachments)
with DfE, RSC SW, ESFA, Avanti Schools Trust and Steiner Waldorf Schools
Fellowship (SWSF) since October 2018.'

We will begin processing this immediately. 
Following the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act we have 20 school working
days to either:

* Provide you with the information you have requested

OR

* If we are unable to provide this information. To inform you as to why
we can't provide the data referring to a relevant exemption in the FOI
Act.

Following this you should expect a response by no later than the 26th
November 2019 for the first two requests and 27th November 2019 for the
third request. 
If you have any questions at this time, please let me know.
Kindest regards 
-
Joseph Atkinson

Dear Ms Darling

I'm emailing in response to your request for:

"Please provide all communications (letters, emails including
attachments) with DfE, RSC SW, ESFA, Avanti Schools Trust and Steiner
Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) since October 2018."

Avanti Gardens may hold information that falls within your request,
however we consider that the cost of complying with your request would
exceed the limit provided under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘the
FOI Act’). We are therefore refusing your request on the following
grounds:

Section 12 – Exceeds cost limit

Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a
request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the
information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other
information would exceed the appropriate limit (currently £450 for the
Academy). This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the
activities described and is the equivalent of 18 hours.

In order to estimate how long it would take to respond to your request, we
ran a search on our system for all email communication to the DFE alone
(using their email identification of @[1]education.gov.uk). The search has
identified 1777 emails held since October 2018 across the school that may
fall within the scope of your request. We estimate that it would take 3-5
minutes to review each email and any attachment/s to consider whether it
falls within scope of your request and to identify duplicate email chains.
Based on this, assuming a 3 minute review time, it would take one officer
over 88 hours or 11.8 working days (assuming a 7.5 hour working day) to
comply with only a small part of your request (1777 (DfE emails) x 3
(minute review time) = 88 hours). 

This does not take into account the time it would take to also compile and
review all correspondence from the 'RSC SW, ESFA, Avanti Schools Trust and
Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) since October 2018'.

As we estimate it would take over the 18 hour limit provided in the FOI
Act to identify, retrieve and extract the information requested, we
consider that section 12 applies and are refusing your request.

Narrowing your request

Under the FOI Act, a public authority is not obliged to search for, or
compile some of the requested information before refusing a request that
it estimates will exceed the appropriate limit. You may wish to narrow the
scope of your request by reducing the timeframe and limiting the type of
information or focusing on the information that is most important to you.

An example of this can be focusing on particular accounts, or focusing on
particular bits of information.

Please note that any refined request we receive will be treated as a fresh
request and we cannot guarantee that any relevant exemptions under the FOI
Act will not apply to a revised request.

I understand this is not ideal, and I apologise for the time it has taken
to get back to you regarding this. As you are aware, this has been a very
busy period for the school and we have recently been dealing with a large
number of Freedom of Information and Subject Access Requests. 

We would appreciate it if you could respond to confirm you have received
this email.

If you have any questions regarding this, or if I can help with anything
else, please let me know.

Kindest regards

-

Joseph Atkinson

Data Officer

References

Visible links
1. http://education.gov.uk/