Halifax school which 'did not meet standards' shuts

Concerns were raised by the education watchdog about safeguarding and leadership at Endeavour House School, in Mixenden, after an inspection on June 24.

The school then shut on July 18.

Endeavour House was an independent school catering for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs.

It was registered to admit six pupils and charged £39,000 a year.

Endeavour House was one of Educ8’s 10 schools. A spokesperson for Educ8 confirmed the Halifax school had shut but declined to comment further.

The Ofsted inspectors’ report, published online yesterday, gave an overall outcome of “the school does not meet all of the independent school standards that were checked during this inspection”.

The quality of education and premises were satisfactory, they said, but there were other areas that were not.

In the report, the inspectors said the school did not have a rigorous and vigilant enough culture of safeguarding, saying pupils’ risk assessments “do not provide staff with the depth of information they need to help keep pupils safe”.

They also said: “The school does not take a serious enough approach to incidents of sexual misconduct.”

They added: “Sometimes it does not address serious misbehaviour, including sexual misconduct, racism and other forms of discriminatory behaviour with enough rigour. This results in pupils repeating the same or similar behaviour.”

The inspectors also raised concerns about the school’s leadership, saying: “The proprietor has not ensured that school leaders possess the requisite knowledge, skills and experience to lead and manage an independent special school.

"The proprietor’s recruitment and selection processes lack appropriate rigour. In addition, the proprietor has not ensured that school leaders receive the professional development they need to build their knowledge and develop their leadership and management skills.

"The proprietor has extensive quality assurance processes in place. However, the proprietor has failed to identify key aspects of school provision, including safeguarding and behaviour management, which require improvement.

"As a result, the school does not meet all of the standards checked on this inspection.”

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