Categorically, she did

This week, We Love Stoke Lodge published a press statement which mentioned that Jo Butler, the Headteacher of Cotham School, had admitted in cross-examination in the High Court that there is no safeguarding requirement for playing fields to be fenced off from the public. Here’s an extract from that press statement:

This seems to have made the school quite cross. It published a statement of its own in response, saying:

‘We must address a significant and misleading misrepresentation in their statement that they persist in claiming. WLSL claim that our headteacher, Jo Butler, has “admitted” there is no safeguarding requirement for fencing, and that this position somehow undermines the legitimacy of necessary safety measures. This is categorically false…
The fencing is not optional; it is a fundamental safeguarding requirement that enables the school to use the land safely and responsibly. This basic principle of child protection should not be controversial.’

The problem for the school is this: Jo Butler did say, on oath, that there was no requirement – from the Department for Education, from Ofsted, or from the Council, for perimeter fencing. Her words were:

“I have never said that Ofsted require schools to erect a perimeter fence.”

Asked again about a letter from Ofsted to a local resident stating that it had never required the school to erect a fence:

she said: “I never said they did”.

Asked whether the Department for Education had ever required the school to put up a fence, she said they had not.

Asked about a Council document which said that fencing is ‘unnecessary in regard to safety, as the school makes use of the site in daylight hours when incidents of trespass without detection would be difficult’, she agreed that that was the Council’s view.

She went on to confirm again in response to questions from her own barrister that there is no general requirement for offsite playing fields to be fenced.

Those of us who were in court took special note of Ms Butler’s statements because it struck us that they were quite different from the impression previously given by the school that Ofsted did have a formal requirement for playing fields to be fenced. You can read more about her previous statements in our post ‘Did she or didn’t she?‘.

But, being under oath – and having highlighted her status an Ofsted inspector – Ms Butler was quite clear. There is no specific safeguarding requirement for fencing. There is really no mystery about this. In the latest edition of the Ofsted inspection handbook, it refers to the official statutory guidance on safeguarding matters, ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education‘, and says, under the heading ‘Safeguarding and security’:

Clearly, children should be kept safe in education, but equally clearly this does not automatically require perimeter fences. As an Ofsted inspector, Jo Butler knows this and as we said before, she very properly said so in court under oath.

For Cotham School to publish a statement saying that ‘The fencing is not optional; it is a fundamental safeguarding requirement‘ puts its headteacher in a tricky position. She knows that is not the case. It is what the school might call a ‘significant and misleading misrepresentation’.

Children can be kept safe by other means than mile-long perimeter fences. Plenty of other schools manage it perfectly well. Plenty of other schools also have public rights of way across their playing fields. Perimeter fences are not a ‘basic principle of child protection’ – at least, not in the view of Ofsted or the Department for Education. There’s no point Cotham trying to spin it any longer. The truth came out in Court. We all get that Cotham School wants a fence, but wanting is not the same as being required to have a fence. We’re just keeping things accurate and honest here.

And we all get that Cotham School wants a fence and has had several risk assessments written to support that objective. But given that it only ever uses about a quarter of the 23 acres of Stoke Lodge, they certainly don’t need a fence around the whole of it, and no competent risk assessor would think that was a good safeguarding solution anyway (we know, we’ve asked one). There is no single spot on the playing field from which you can see the whole of the field, so fencing it as a single area makes no sense from a risk management perspective. From a future development perspective, on the other hand…