Ofsted Inspections City of Norwich School, an Ormiston Academy

Dear Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills,

In May 2022 I requested Ofsted Inspection Evidence Forms for an inspection of the City of Norwich School, an Ormiston Academy which was inspected on 7th December 2021.

My request and your response can be viewed at the following WDTL URL:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f...

Referring to elements of the response as follows:

"Each House has a DSL, plus two in the Sixth Form, plus deputy SENCo. Update training every two years. .... Regular mapping meetings, CPOMs, on staff development, went through KCSIE, what a good referral looks like. Staff can't categorise, two DLSs get every concern, inc DSL. DSLs have a case load, and DSL supervises those. Meet weekly, Set weekley meeting, an hour a week, but daily contact. .... MoS knows ir has been followed up on, but Sls say it is down to MoS to check specifically what has been done if it is an urgent concern."

I would like to make the following FOIR:

Where it refers to "update training every two years", does the inspector review the type of training undertaken? e.g. internally provided or externally?

Does the inspector review the last time the training was provided? If so could you advise the provider and the last training dates given as they are not recorded in the notes.

Where it states "DSLs have a case load, and DSL supervises those." Could you clarify the duplicate use of 'DSL' in the sentence (e.g. I assume one abbreviation DSL refers to a Deputy Safeguarding Lead and the 2nd refers to the Designated Safeguarding Lead? However please confirm if my assumption is correct or not. If not correct please provide a clarification.

Where there is a reference using the abbreviation 'MoS' could you provide the meaning of the abbreviation? (e.g. Manager of Safeguarding).

Where the report states "went through KCSIE, what a good referral looks like." I believe it is correct for me to assume the school safeguarding policies comply with the 'Keeping Children Safe in Education' statutory guidance and the procedures for making referrals detailed in the guidance, please can you confirm if my assumption is correct? If not please provide a clarification of the sentence.

Is compliance with the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance a routine (or core) inspection point? i.e. would this be something inspectors evaluate as a matter of routing at every inspection?

Finally please could you provide the Ofsted Inspection Evidence Forms for an inspection of the City of Norwich School, an Ormiston Academy which was inspected on 11th October 2016.

Yours faithfully,

Gary

Dear InformationRequest,

Thank you for your acknowledgement of my FOIR today.

Regarding your statement as follows:

"Your queries regarding the 2021 inspection are not valid FOI requests, as they require the creation of an explanation, rather than recorded information. We will pass these to the relevant team, and ask whether they are able to address your queries outside of the FOI Act."

I would like to challenge that statement as I believe the Ofsted Evidence Forms as requested constitute information what would or should already be held by Ofsted, should there be a refusal or a claim they don't exist then I would like to challenge that now rather than await an outcome that may require the intervention of the ICO.

However, should I receive the information outside of the FOI anyway I am unconcerned under what means it is provided to me.

Yours sincerely,

Gary

Dear Kerry McTear,

Thank you for your response dated 12th April 2024.

In your response you state as follows:

"Further to our email advising that the regional team will be responding to your queries about the 2021Kerry McTear"

Unfortunately I can't make sense of the response in relation to my original request and follow up correspondence and I believe the response may have become garbled or parts cut off within the systems.

Please could you clarify the meaning of your statement:

"Further to our email advising that the regional team will be responding to your queries about the 2021Kerry McTear"

Yours sincerely,

Gary

Dear InformationRequest,

Thank you for your reply of the 16th April 2024 requesting my private email address to respond to my FOIR. The WhatDoTheyKnow.com website removes references to private email addresses and replaces with a WhatDoTheyKnow.com account email address so I have email my response directly to the Ofsted Information Rights Team under separate cover from my private email address. The Ofsted email address used was taken from a similar request and provided to the requestor at the following link:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

For the purposes of maintaining a valid audit trail of the request on WDTK my email consisted as follows:
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Kerry McTear, Information Access Officer | Information Rights and Access Team (IRAT)

Please find below my private email address as requested by you in response to my FOIR via the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website - re: FOIR link as below:

Ofsted Inspections City of Norwich School, an Ormiston Academy - a Freedom of Information request to Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills - WhatDoTheyKnow requesting my private email address to respond to my FOIR. The WDTK website removes references to private email addresses so I have sent an email, from my private email address, to the Ofsted Information RIghts Team published as an attachment to a similar response at the following link:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

[Private email address removed]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't understand how in both responses the Ofsted raises concerns regarding the security risks of using the WDTK website, I have found it a valid source of information and probably saves public authorities time and effort to avoid duplicate requests that can be researched on the WDTK website.

Yours sincerely,

Gary

Dear Kerry McTear,

Thank you for your responses to my FOIR so far.

Just to recap for the benefit of a clear audit trail of correspondence the main points are as follows:

1) FOIR submitted on the FOIR submitted on the 21st March 2024.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

2) Confirmation of request received on the 27th March 2024 advising as follows:

"Your queries regarding the 2021 inspection are not valid FOI requests, as they require the creation of an explanation, rather than recorded information. We will pass these to the relevant team, and ask whether they are able to address your queries outside of the FOI Act."

3) Reply from myself on the 27th challenging the information requested requires creation of new information and expressing my opinion the information requested does fall within the Act.

4) Correspondence from Ofsted requesting my personal email address.

5) Reply to Ofsted via my personal email providing the requested personal email address.

6) 18th April 2024 correspondence from Daniel Lambert, Senior His Majesty’s Inspector, Schools
East of England requesting further personal information in the form of my phone number and dates/times I can be contacted on it.

7) 23rd April 2024 reply to DL supplying my personal telephone number. and dates/times I can be contacted.

8) 24th April 2024 a response from Kerry McTear to my personal email address providing a partial response to my FOIR with three attachments. The correspondence had some attachments and the covering email indicated that the response to my private email would be duplicated on the WDTK website for completeness.

9) 24th April 2024 the response did appear on the WDTK website but was not complete as only one of the attachments was sent to the WDTK website.

10) 26th April 2024, a phone call from DL regarding clarification of responses from Ofsted was received.

During the phone call DL re-iterated that there would not be a documented response to the outstanding elements of my FOI as they felt the information fell outside of the FOIA and declined to provide a written confirmation of the phone call. I expressed the view that the information requested does fall within the Act and although DL did provide clarifications of acronyms/abbreviation requested the timeline of the response fell outside of the Act and I wished to obtain an ICO decision on that matter (Section 10 of the FOIA).

I also promised to email DL with what I consider to be my interpretation of the content of our conversation as I am aware the ICO, when submitting a complaint wish to see documentary evidence of the audit trail of an FOIR, including dates/times information etc.

29th April 2024 a follow up email to Ofsted submitted to Ofsted via WDTK and can be viewed at the following URL:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

The information requested will support my complaint to ICO and my view that the information requested could be in existence in a document which is an internal document containing a glossary of the terms most commonly used in writing for Ofsted. Should the information requested not be in the glossary then I wish to raise a concern of the standard of the writing of the evidence notice and the inspection itself which I believe did not comply with Ofsted required standards.

Within the next day or so I will submit via my private email my recap and interpretation of the telephone conversation to DL and request a response if DL agrees with my interpretation.

Although DL did provide the clarifications of acronyms and abbreviations requested, and although the response was only 6 days outside of the time limit, usually when such things occur via WDTK I do not see any benefit to involve the ICO on the matter they as only issue a public decision notice that the response was outside of the time limit and as this is also recorded on WDTK anyway I see no benefit to involve the ICO in general. However as the Ofsted insisted I supply personal information including my personal email address and telephone number to ensure the response is 'offline' I believe it is in the public interest to (a) seek a decision notice from the ICO if the information requested did fall inside the FOIA and also a Section 10 decision if it does. The follow up request made today will assist my complaint to the ICO.

Yours Sincerely

Gary Symonds

Dear Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills's handling of my FOI request 'Ofsted Inspections City of Norwich School, an Ormiston Academy'.

I would like to refer to my Freedom of Information request (FOIR) of the 27th March 2024 and my concerns of its handling by Ofsted.

As advised to Daniel Lambert during a subsequent telephone conversation on the 26th April 2024, I did submit a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) regarding the handling of my FOIR following the phone call.

The complaint has been accepted by the ICO, however the ICO have since written to me advising me that they will not be investigating my concerns of the handling of my FOIR by Ofsted until I have submitted a Request for Internal Review (RfIR) to Ofsted stating as follows:

"Before we accept a complaint for investigation, we expect you to give
Ofsted the chance to review its initial response to your request for
information. We refer to this reconsideration as an internal review, and
understand that this has not formally been requested."

"You should therefore contact Ofsted again and ask it to review its
handling of your request. You should request an internal review if you
believe that there is further recorded information held for the purposes of
FOIA. As a period of time has elapsed since the response was provided to
you, you should be clear as to why a delay has occurred in submitting a
request for review."

I believe the following evidence supports my RfIR is valid:

Although this RfIR does fall within the 40 working day timescale of submission, as required by the Act and ICO guidelines, the reason for the delay is that I am now of the opinion that the Ofsted had misguided me by stating the information requested was not held and that an undocumented response via a telephone call from a Senior His Majesties Inspector to my personal contact number was necessary in order to provide the requested information outside of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA or 'the Act'), on that basis I agreed, in the belief that as long as I received all the information requested, I was unconcerned how I received the information even if it was dealt with outside of the Act as being unrecorded information.

However as I have since found evidence that leads me to believe that the information requested does fall within the Act and is recorded information thus I now believe it is appropriate to request an ICO decision regarding Section 10 of the Act (time limits for responses) and the handling requirement by Ofsted to provide further personal information before Ofsted would process the request via an undocumented phone call.

As a result of the lack cooperative advice and information I feel I was not properly advised that I could make a Request for Internal Review for parts the Ofsted declined to provide a response via WDTK and as a result of later discovering, from information from the phone call, the existence of a 'Guide to Ofsted’s House Style' I made a subsequent, corresponding request which included a request for a document referred to within the 'Guide to Ofsted's House Style' that provides "a glossary of the terms most commonly used in writing for Ofsted."

A link to the 'Guide to Ofsted's House Style' that also refers to an internal document - a 'Glossary of terms most commonly used by Ofsted' can be viewed at the following archived URL link:

https://web.archive.org/web/202404301845...

It is only because of the ICO advice to me to make an RfIR that I was made aware I could make an RfIR on the handling of parts of the request in order to remain a consistent compliance with FOIA protocol, the Ofsted did not advise me of that in their various written and telephone responses to my FOIR that they considered to have been handled outside of the FOIA.

Since receiving a telephone call from Daniel Lambert, Senior His Majesties Inspector (SHMI) for the Ofsted I have reviewed Ofsted responsibilities regarding the inspections of academies, schools and local authorities and found additional information that supports my belief that the request does fall within the FOIA and made a followup FOIR, via WDKT, to Ofsted for a 'glossary of terms most commonly used by Ofsted' which is mentioned in an Ofsted House Style guide discovered as a result of a telephone call received from Daniel Lambert on the 26th April 2024. This FOIR can be viewed at the following URL:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

At the time I believed submitting a corresponding request for the glossary of terms would be an assistance not only to my understanding of the evidence notes report that had been provided to me in response to a previous FOIR but would be useful to Ofsted that requestors of evidence reports can decode the meaning of abbreviations themselves without having to make follow up FOIR to obtain the meaning. The inspection evidence notes contain many abbreviations and acronyms making it hard for individuals not familiar with educational abbreviations to understand at times. However the evidence notes are crucial to research I am undertaking regarding the regulation of schools, academies and local authorities and as I intend to submit my findings to various Ministers and other regulatory authorities I do need to ensure the accuracy of my research.

Currently the separate but corresponding FOIR that the response refers to has been refused quoting Section 14(1) of the FOIA. The refusal letter is very lengthy and perhaps publishes to much information into the public domain, including in addition to the personal identity that links me to the decision notice but other sensitive information related to the decision notice as Ofsted then went on to identify the public authorities involved in my FOIR, despite the ICO having spent time to redact them. The covering email from the ICO, when sending me a copy of that decision notice stated as follows:

"The Commissioner will publish this decision on the ICO website, but will remove all names and addresses of complainants. If the public authority [Ofsted] also chooses to reproduce this decision notice, then the Commissioner expects similar steps to be taken."

As that response from Ofsted above is linked to a different but corresponding FOIR in support of my research I believe it best to provide further detail in a separate RfIR, at a later date, for that response as it could be lengthy given the lengthy detailed letter refusing my FOIR.

I believe it is unusual for the ICO to redact the identities of public authorities within decision notices but I assume it may be because the redacted information including public authority names could be aggregated to identify an individual central to a number of my FOIR.

The Executive of one of the public authorities (not Ofsted) that the Ofsted has since publicly identified within that decision notice (IC-193728-C9H7) has, since that decision notice, directly written to me and threatened to involve the police for my making of information requests and follow up complaints related my ongoing research, making me feel they constitute criminal offences. However although despite my invitation for them to do so and provide any evidence to support the claims, they have not followed up and made any reports to the police about me despite my making of further information requests, and neither have they provided any evidence to the police to support the threat, although police and ICO records will show that I have ensured I contacted them, with the evidence of the letter. I believe I recall that I made the Ofsted aware of this but stand to be corrected if I overlooked that. I retain a copy of that letter which has also been lodged with the police and the ICO.

I believe highlighting this as part of my RfIR is relevant because all my FOIR have the same focus, that is the regulation of safeguarding in schools, academies and local authorities. Some of my FOIR have been to multiple public authorities in one FOIR correspondence and I circulated that letter to those authorities as I felt it could introduce a bias if any of the authorities were influenced that the making of information requests and complaints could be criminal offences. It also highlights the difficulties I have experienced in obtaining responses to my FOIRs which for a number of them have been hindered by having to involve RfIR or involve the ICO or ombudsman so it has been a lengthy research project, and Ofsted in a separate refusal to two other FOIR have published indicating my FOIR to them have no value and are vexatious.

An assistant director of another redacted public authority has also echoed that sentiment to me during a meeting although stopping short of making the same direct threat so I believe there is a public interest in my research, especially as many months later I continue to submit FOIR to various authorities on the core research of the regulation of my child safeguarding concerns by authorities.

It's not appropriate to publish the letter within this RfIR but I'm happy to provide a copy on request.

The purpose of my subsequent reporting the letter to the ICO and the police was that the threat mentioned my use of the information rights acts side by side with complaints processes to undertake my research and so is relevant.

Within the refusal letter to a corresponding FOIR, the Ofsted seems to have mistakenly but publicly pre-empted the motivations of my FOIRs and publishes their decision to waiver my right to respond with any RfIR and directed me to contact to ICO directly, I feel misguiding me to bypass the RfIR process, but as can be seen from the ICO advice above I must submit RfIRs to responses before they will consider handling complaints about the handling of an FOIR by a public authority.

Just to recap the audit trail of my FOIR, both within and outside of whatdotheyknow.com (WDTK) as follows:

27-03-24 - Initial FOIR submitted via WDTK.

27-03-24 - Confirmation of receipt from Ofsted with advice that elements of my FOIR are not valid requests as they require the creation of an explanation rather than recorded information and that the Ofsted would seek, from the relevant team, if my queries could be addressed outside of the Act.

27-03-24 - Explanation from myself to Ofsted that I disagreed that Ofsted wouldn't hold the information and that my FOIR is valid and sought clarification in order to potentially avoid ICO intervention later in the process.

12 & 16-04-24 - Confirmation from Kerry McTear of Ofsted that the [East of England] Regional Team would be responding to my queries and a request for my personal email address for them to contact me.

17-04-24 - Confirmation of my personal email address sent to Ofsted outside of WDTK.

18-04-24 - email from Ofsted outside of WDTK to my personal email address with a letter from Daniel, Lambert Senior His Majesty's Inspector (SHMI) of East of England Team, requesting my availability to discuss elements of my FOIR via a phone call.

19-04-24 - email to Daniel Lambert outside of WDTK providing my availability for week commencing 22-04-2024

22-04-24 - email from Daniel Lambert outside of WDTK suggesting a suitable date and requesting confirmation of my personal phone number.

24-04-24 - email to Daniel Lambert outside of WDTK confirming my availability and my personal phone number.

26-04-24 - 23 minute phone call from Daniel Lambert to my personal phone number to discuss my FOIR outside of WDTK.

30-04-24 - I felt a written synopsis of the phone call was important to make sure there were no misinterpretations of what was discussed so an email to Daniel Lambert outside of WDTK to provide a synopsis, and seek confirmation, of my interpretation of the phone call.

30-04-24 - 1st email from Daniel Lambert outside of WDTK regarding my synopsis of the telephone call.

30-04-24 - 2nd email from Daniel Lambert outside off WDTK regarding my synopsis of the telephone call.

A full audit trail of correspondence undertaken outside of WDTK at the request of Ofsted is at the following link:

https://myarchived.link/ofsted/Audit-Tra...

(NB in accordance with WDTK House Style email addresses, personal phone numbers and signatures have been redacted).

During the telephone conversation on the 26th April, I did mention to Daniel Lambert that I believed that elements of the discussion held did indicate to me that I continued to believe elements of the FOIR discussed during the phone call were not outside of the FOIA but seemed to confirm that those elements of my FOIR Kerry McTear, Ofsted Information Access Officer, had originally stated were outside of the FOIA did in fact fall within the Act:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

To support this, after the phone call I entered discussion points I noted during the call into an AI search engine (perplexity.ai) which returned information that pointed to a 'Guide to Ofsted House Style' that I believed confirmed my belief that I was misguided into providing my personal email and phone number to Ofsted to receive information outside of the Act and that I should have received a written response, via WDTK for elements that fell within the Act.

The 'Guide to Ofsted House Style' is viewable at the following URL:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...

Following the phone discussion I emailed a synopsis of my interpretation of the discussion, outside of WDTK, to Daniel Lambert for their confirmation & approval. Within the email I mentioned the Guide to Ofsted House Style and that it supported my view that my FOIR requested information that the Ofsted would or should hold; the 1st email response from Daniel Lambert on the 30-04-24 indicated that "we [Ofsted] would not expect inspection teams to write in house style when recording evidence".

As part of my RfIR I seek confirmation from Ofsted of Daniel Lambert's statement that they do not expect inspection teams to write in house style when recording evidence and that the house style is only expected when writing final reports. This is because the statements are counter intuitive.

Ofsted audits schools and academies compliance with recognised standards, so I believe it should follow an adherence to standards throughout their own inspection quality assurance. As an example, an Ofsted inspection will usually consist of several inspectors conducting information gathering evidence, and electronically recording, that evidence on Ofsted application software for later compilation into a final report. As far as I can see from the statement that Ofsted 'would not expect inspectors to write in house style when recording evidence' during the evidence gathering phase could lead to multiple evidence reports from inspectors being submitted for compilation into a final report containing multiple the personal interpretations of abbreviations and acronyms. I believe this would make it very difficult to know which interpretation, among the various inspectors personal interpretations, to apply to the final report.

Within an Ofsted information presentation video, on the Ofsted YouTube channel, Daniel Lambert's introduction to how Ofsted gathers information and evidence asserts that 'the best kind of evidence is first hand evidence gathered when inspectors are on site through discussions, peoples work, and document scrutiny'. I believe that emphasises that compliance with the 'Guide to Ofsted's House Style' should be expected at this stage and it's my view that first hand evidence, confirmed in the presentation as "gathered electronically" during the evidence gathering phase of an inspection, provides the root of any subsequent Ofsted reports and would or should follow the Ofsted's House Style Guide in order to maintain a continuity of evidence during the inspection process from start to finish including the final report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UEFLSfT...

A later response to a corresponding FOIR also informed me that Ofsted were "content to waive the internal review stage of any FOI appeals process in favour of you directly approaching the ICO if you are dissatisfied with this response". I believe that the Ofsted appeals process does indicate a compliance with the FOIA and ICO guidelines regarding RfIR and that by wavering the internal review stage of the FOI appeals process are, as a consequence, intentionally wavering my own right to submit an FOI appeal and I believe is not compliant with the FOIA or ICO guidelines. It's my opinion that although the Ofsted may divert from their complaints procedure and refuse to respond to an FOI appeal they cannot waiver my right to submit an FOI appeal in the first place, particularly as the ICO have confirmed to me that they will refuse to accept a complaint that has not gone through the FOIA appeals process.

In my complaint to Ofsted I have stated that I felt I was misguided by Ofsted into supplying my personal email and contact number to Ofsted in the belief the information I had requested did fall outside of the FOIA, however the resulting phone call and further statements by Ofsted left me to now believe that elements of the information requested were information already held by Ofsted at the time of my request.

As a result of the ICO letter requesting me to make an RfIR to Ofsted and explain the reasons for any delay before they will investigate my complaint I believe provides further evidence that the Ofsted continued to misguide me by telling me they are wavering my rights to make an RfIR and to directly submit my complaint to the ICO instead.

As part of this RfIR can the Ofsted confirm or deny that Ofsted did not hold, at the time of my FOIR, information that elements such as, for examples, the abbreviations KCSIE, DSL, MoS stood for 'Keeping Children Safe in Education', 'Designated Safeguarding Lead' and 'Member of Staff' respectively.

24-04-24 - Partial response to elements of my FOIR via WDTK.

The Ofsted did not issue a proper refusal notice that the information did not fall under the FOIA nor did they offer the process of appeal but instead requested my personal details before they would proceed with the information request response in an informal manner. Had I had proper advice and assistance that I could appeal that decision I would not have agreed that I would accept information via an undocumented phone call outside of the Act as I now believe the requested information did fall inside the Act and should have been provided in a written response. My corresponding new request for the 'glossary of the terms most commonly used in writing for Ofsted' submitted later could also have been avoided as could my request for ICO intervention. Although I did receive most of the information over the phone there was still an ambiguity in the responses. At the request of Daniel Lambert I did provide a number of dates of my availability to take the telephone call and all but one fell within the timescale requirements of the Act but the call was arranged for a timescale that fell outside of the Act. Generally when making requests via WDTK if they fall only a brief time outside of the timescale for a response I see no benefit to involve the ICO for a decision as WDTK automatically records this online anyway, however as Ofsted requested to respond outside of WDTK via an undocumented phone call I believe the handling of my FOIR merits an ICO decision.

Although FOIR are applicant blind I believe it is appropriate to provide my reasons for the FOIR to Ofsted as they form part of a wider investigation involving a number of public authorities stating my concerns regarding the regulation of child safeguarding within academies, schools and local authorities. Individually each FOIR may seem irrelevant, as do some responses, but when aggregated do show links in my research that supports my valid concerns of safeguarding in schools, academies and local authorities and will form first hand evidence to support a report I will be submitting to a number of Ministers and Parliament. Although I prefer to use WDTK in general, where the FOIR could reveal sensitive information or too much personal information I have used my personal email so the complete background of my research is not immediately apparent via reading only my WDTK requests and responses.

Clearly the Ofsted had expended some resources to avoid providing the requested information via WDTK but I now believe had misguided me into providing, informally outside of WDTK, the information via a telephone call with a Senior His Majesties Inspector. I understand that the role of a Senior His Majesties Inspector is a very high profile role so the resources diverted to make the call to me (lasting in excess of 23 minutes) in conjunction with the pre call correspondence will be significant in view I believe the clarifications could have been undertaken by a more junior member of staff or by the provision of the glossary of common terms used by Ofsted as indicated in the Ofsted House Style Guide. If it was a case that the clarifications could only be made by an SHMI then I believe that does demonstrate the importance that the Guide to Ofsted House style should be expected throughout all stages of the audit documentation process, including the inspection evidence reports stage, to avoid such future requests for clarification. The Ofsted regularly provides inspection reports in response to FOIR.

Academies and schools subject to an Ofsted grading are allowed to challenge any Ofsted grading so it begs the question if the Ofsted inspector evidence notice requires the intervention of an SHMI to interpret any ambiguity (or nuance) of the abbreviations/acronyms usage in every case.

I also believe it will be a matter of public interest and to various Ministers responsible for education Health and Safety as well as Safeguarding compliance, as well as Ofsted inspections in general, that a very large part of the evidence gathering process of an inspection is not expected to comply with Ofsted House Style Guidelines. Ofsted employs many inspectors, some on an individual self employed contract basis. Inspectors have to undertake training and assessment before they can request to be an inspector so in the absence of a quality assured audit process where, at some significant stages, inspectors are not expected to conform to organisation wide House Styles Guide the scope for a variety of inspection report outcomes could be wide.

I believe the advice from ICO that I should seek an internal review of the Ofsted response to my FOIR before they will accept a complaint on the handling of any FOIR confirms my belief that the Ofsted advice to me that they were wavering my right to submit future internal reviews and to directly contact the ICO instead for corresponding FOIR was misguiding advice that should not have been given to me.

The Public Interest:

I believe the public interest in my original FOIR and subsequent RfIR is that the Ofsted should be transparent and clear when providing evidence reports that support inspection decisions. Any acronyms or abbreviations should be clarified in accordance with the Guide to Ofsted House Style and it's associated Glossary of Common Terms. This should be made available to the public and not disclosed via one to one telephone conversations from Senior His Majesties Inspectors. I do question the wisdom of Ofsted utilising the time of a SHMI to arrange and make calls to personal contact numbers of Information Rights requestors to provide clarifications of abbreviations or acronyms used in evidence reports that should otherwise be freely available from information I now believe to be already held within Ofsted systems at the time of the FOIR. At the time of Ofsted's initial responses it baffled me into believing the information requested was perhaps confidential or open to interpretations on a case by case basis, and that the information requested was not held by Ofsted and that only an SHMI could interpret the request given Ofsted's acknowledgements that 'inspection teams are not expected to write in [Ofsted] house style when recording evidence'.

Within Daniel Lambert's 2nd email response to verify accordance with my synopsis of the phone call they used the adjective 'likely' when confirming to the phone call responses to meanings of abbreviations - for example during the telephone call I repeated word for word all of my original FOIR elements of the meaning of abbreviations and acronyms one of which related to the meaning of KSCIE ( response given - Keeping Children Safe in Education) in the email response it was stated "this is very likely to be the meaning of the abbreviation". A similar response was given for the meaning of DSL (response given - Designated Safeguarding Lead). This introduces to me the feeling of a level of ambiguity of the response indicating it could have other meanings within the context of an evidence report. As the clarifications I requested are crucial to provide evidence for my research there should be no ambiguity of the identification of roles present during an inspection. The full email response to my FOIR is recorded in an archived documents folder (labelled with the WDTK FOIR serial number) of correspondence related to my FOIR but was undertaken outside of WDTK at the request of Ofsted this will ensure the WDTK audit trail of correspondence is fully documented:

https://myarchived.link/ofsted/Audit-Tra...

(all individual email, personal phone numbers and signatures are redacted in accordance with WDTK House Style).

I look forwards to Ofsted's helpful advice and assistance to contribute to the assurances I seek (based on evidence I had previously submitted to them prior to an inspection) of the regulation of statutory compliance of Health and Safety as well as statutory compliance with Child Safeguarding within academies, schools and local authorities. I also continue to seek Ofsted helpful advice and assistance to assist my information rights submissions to further my research into the regulation of schools, academies and local authorities.

Should you require any clarifications please do not hesitate to ask.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/o...

Yours faithfully,

Gary