All Saints Academy, Dunstable, R (on the application of) v The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) & Anor

In challenges to school inspection reports, procedural fairness and the duty to give reasons are context-specific. A school must receive the gist of the criticisms and sufficient explanation to respond to a draft report, but need not receive the full evidence base, sources of confidential information, or a detailed evidential audit. Information given orally to senior school leaders during the inspection, together with their existing knowledge, may be taken into account. A final report must identify the principal adverse findings, explain their basis sufficiently for the school and intended public audience to understand them, and indicate what improvement is required. It may remain concise and need not quantify every evaluative judgment. There is no general obligation to explain in the final report why provisional judgments from an earlier inspection, which failed quality assurance, differed from the later judgments.

The claimant academy school challenged an Ofsted inspection report following an initial inspection in November 2022 and a further visit under Ofsted’s Gathering Additional Evidence protocol in January 2023. The first team’s provisional overall judgment was “Requires Improvement”; the second team provisionally judged the school “Inadequate”. Following quality assurance, a factual accuracy process and a complaints investigation, Ofsted issued the Final Report without changing the grades.

Linden J granted permission on two grounds only: whether the school had been given sufficient reasons, explanation or evidence to contest the proposed findings, and whether the Final Report gave sufficient reasons for the adverse findings, the required improvements and the change from the earlier provisional judgments. The remaining challenges, including merits and irrationality challenges, were outside the scope of the claim.

1. Both grounds dismissed. The claim was confined to procedural fairness and adequacy of reasons. It was not an appeal against the inspection grades or a merits challenge.
2. Ground 1 was a procedural fairness challenge concerning a draft report. The draft was not a legally effective decision, so the ordinary common-law duty to give reasons for a decision did not apply directly. Nevertheless, fairness required sufficient explanation to enable the school to respond. That obligation arose from the statutory opportunity to comment under section 13 of the Education Act 2005 and overlapping common-law duties.
3. In assessing fairness, the court could consider all information available to the school before it made comments on the draft, including explanations given orally to the principal, chair of governors and senior management during the inspection, especially at final feedback, and the school’s existing knowledge of its circumstances. Passing comments to junior staff and information supplied for the first time during litigation could not be relied on. The school needed the gist of the criticisms, not the full evidence base or the sources of confidential comments.
4. Ground 2 was a reasons challenge to the Final Report. The report complied with the express statutory requirements to cover the matters identified in sections 5(5A) and 5(5B) of the Education Act 2005. Its reasons also satisfied the common-law standard: they were intelligible, adequate and sufficient to identify the principal findings, their basis and the improvements required. The report’s intended audience included parents and prospective parents, and the inspection system’s scale justified a concise, accessible format.
5. Generalised evaluative statements did not require numerical thresholds or disclosure of every supporting observation. The report could rely on inspectors’ professional judgment and did not need to disclose confidential sources. Nor was there a legal obligation to provide a detailed comparison between the failed first inspection’s provisional judgments and the conclusions reached after the further visit. The first provisional judgments had fallen away; the school had been told why the inspection was incomplete and what areas required further evidence.
6. The Final Report therefore gave sufficient information to understand the adverse findings and what the school needed to do to improve. The court made no determination on whether the grades were substantively correct.

This was a first-instance judicial review in the Administrative Court. Linden J had granted permission on two limited grounds and refused interim relief: [2023] EWHC 1834 (Admin). The claim was then determined by Cavanagh J.