Birmingham failing vulnerable children, Ofsted warns

Birmingham City Council is failing to protect vulnerable children across its schools and children’s services, according to Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw.

In a letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, Wilshaw said he has ‘continuing concerns’ about the Council’s ability to provide help for children in need and ensure the safety of school-age children.

Wilshaw’s comments come two years after the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, an alleged plot to impose radical views across Birmingham schools.

The Ofsted chief highlighted that progress had been made across these schools, with two being upgraded from inadequate to to good in recent inspections, but cautioned that the situation was still ‘fragile’ and the good practice developed by some schools to counter radicalisation and extremism was not being disseminated effectively to others.

The letter describes the leadership of safeguarding children in Birmingham’s schools as weak and lacking ’sufficient rigour’. Wilshaw suggests that staff are ‘too slow in checking the whereabouts of children missing from education’, with many who remain missing simply being removed from the council’s records’ - a total of 253 children were removed from the council’s list between September 2015 and January 2016.

He also claimed that checks made on children who are home schooled are not ‘rigorous enough’ with home visits by Council staff not giving sufficient attention to safeguarding issues.

Wilshaw said that he was particularly concerned that children not properly tracked by the Council could be exposed to harm, exploitation or risk falling under the influence of extremist views. As a result he has called on the Education Secretary to assign an Ofsted inspector to any local authority where children are though to be at greater risk of radicalisation or their safety is being put in jeopardy by poor safeguarding practices.

Responding to Wilshaw’s comments, Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “In order to guarantee that any improvements are sustainable and felt across the city, local school leaders need to be able to rely on the local authority, the DfE [Department for Education] and the Regional Schools Commissioner to back them up. School leaders should not bear these pressures alone.

“NAHT has long campaigned for statutory PSHE. We do so in order to protect teachers when they tackle challenging topics. Events in Birmingham should be proof enough that the time has come for the government to make this a reality.

“We believe that greater vigilance is necessary and there should be no complacency. It’s still too early to say this problem is solved. School leaders need the reassurances and support. It is time for a full review of all recommendations and actions of the various reports issued over the past two years, to make sure that all the necessary steps are being taken.”