One of England’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools has fallen foul of government inspectors, and its future may be in doubt. Is it too arrogant to recognise it must reform itself, or is it the victim of an anti-Catholic, anti-public school plot?
In the last four years, the £37,905-a-year 220-year-old Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire has failed three inspections by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) and four by Ofsted. The Department for Education has demanded that the school produce Action Plans and timetables for reforms, and for three months last year banned the school from taking new pupils; sources told The Tablet that senior figures at the Department were seriously considering whether the school should be closed. The school has had five head teachers in the past decade.
Leaders at the school have been keen to stress that its poor safeguarding record belongs in the past. The devastating 2018 report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) recorded physical and sexual abuse at Ampleforth and its now defunct prep school, “inflicted over decades on children aged as young as seven”, mostly by monks, from the 1960s onwards. Two suicides by former pupils have been linked to the abuse they allegedly suffered there. IICSA cited concerns raised in a 2017 independent external review, the findings of an inquiry by the Charity Commission the following year and a 2018 failed ISI report, and concluded: “Several systemic child protection and safeguarding challenges remain at Ampleforth to this day.” Safeguarding specialist David Molesworth was quoted as saying: “I do not believe currently that the organisation as a whole understands or accepts their responsibilities for child protection issues … We appear to be dealing with denial or downright obstruction.”
