Parent asked seven times for controversial free school to send him minutes of governor meetings, without success, emails reveal

The headteacher of a free school, which is currently under pressure from the government, would not provide a parent minutes of its governing body meetings without meeting him despite repeated requests, email correspondence seen by Education Uncovered reveals.

The exchange of communication between David Perks, high profile principal of the East London Science School (ELSS), and then-parent Chris Coyle appears to have put Perks at odds with the requirements of the school’s funding agreement with the Department for Education.

Under its funding agreement, and also the trust’s constitution – its articles of association – governing body minutes have to be provided to any interested individual for inspection at the school. This is standard practice in terms of the rules under which academies are founded.

Coyle, who is himself a chair of governors at another school, withdrew his child from ELSS following a dispute with Perks, which had originated over behaviour but a strand of which was to centre on access to the minutes. Coyle asked Perks and ELSS’s chair of governors, Adam Atashzai, for these at least seven times, without success, correspondence between them shows.

Coyle grew so frustrated with the school that he said he had lost all faith in its leadership and his second child did not go on to attend ELSS, as had been a strong possibility before the dispute.

ELSS offered no substantive comment itself, but said it was following up the issue directly with Coyle.

The East London Science School, which has links to the online magazine Spiked and the associated company Academy of Ideas, run by the former Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox, has been under severe pressure from the government having been issued with a Financial Notice to Improve last year. 

The detail

Communication between Coyle and Perks, with Atashzai copied in on most of the email correspondence, began in April 2019. In an email dated April 30^th, Coyle, who at the time had a child in the school in year 8, contacted both with concerns about behaviour in the school, a secondary with 568 pupils as of last year, in the borough of Newham.

Coyle said he had some worries, which he hoped were not justified, about in-class behaviour, and that he “would like better to understand the role your school governors are playing in this matter, what type of monitoring is in place, and what follow-up evidence the school has to show that disruptive behaviour is being managed effectively – or what changes need to be put in place.”

Coyle, who is chair of governors at an Ofsted-outstanding primary school elsewhere in East London, added that he was “more than happy to come in and discuss” this with Perks, and that “meeting up will help clarify if this is an issue or not”.

An exchange of emails followed in which there was a difference of views between Perks and Coyle about whether this constituted a governance issue. Coyle provided some more detail on his concerns about behaviour in an email on May 1^st.

Request 1

Then, in an email to Perks and Atashzai dated May 17^th, Coyle said: “This is a polite reminder of my request for copies of your governing body meetings* – perhaps the last four, please. I have noted that it’s been over two weeks since my request was made, with no response from either of you….I look forward to receiving the copy minutes within the next seven days – I’ll then seek to arrange to meet with either of you, or [the governor who Coyle said appeared to focus on behaviour], or all three if you wish.”

Emails are then exchanged in which Perks asks Coyle for more information on the latter’s concerns about behaviour and says he will provide the minutes, but at a meeting rather than in advance. In his reply of May 17^th, Perks tells Coyle: “On your request for minutes, I will happily discuss this with you once we have had a chance to meet. It would I think be best to talk first before we take things further.”

Coyle’s position, however, was that he wanted to read the minutes in advance of any meeting, so that he fully understood what the record said about ELSS’s strategies on behaviour, before talking to the principal.

Request 2

Coming back himself on May 17^th, Coyle wrote: “The reason I am requesting gov meeting minutes is because I am wanting to know what, if anything, is being reported to govs re behaviour. You have a governor whose remit includes behaviour, and I am keen to know what her level of involvement is, as there does seem to be some behavioural issues that warrant attention.

“If nothing has been reported to governors, then why not? And if behaviour has been reported to govs, what are the action plans, monitoring and feedback to govs to ensure improvement?

“I do not wish to suggest that you don’t take these things seriously, as I genuinely believe you do. As a parent, and as a chair of governors myself, I am aware that best results are achieved with govs working closely with the school, but what is communicated in gov meetings is critical to this.”

He added: “I am more than happy to meet you…[on a date which] will also give me time to read the minutes of the recent governing body…?”

In a response on May 19^th, Perks said: “I take your concerns seriously but I must insist the first thing we do is meet so that I can fully understand your specific concerns if I am to address them.

“I will send you relevant documentation but as I have explained this will not make sense unless you give me a clear explanation of your concerns [about behaviour].”

Request 3

Emailing back on May 20^th, Coyle re-iterated his request for the minutes, “which any parent is entitled to request and see, and shouldn’t be a problem for any school to provide”.

Request 4

After Perks’s personal assistant came back with some suggested meeting times, and they agree one, Coyle then responded on May 23rd asking for “the last few gov meeting notes” to be sent to him. He added: “I’ve waited quite some time for these now, which never should have happened in the first place.

“As the school knows, I can request these under the Freedom of Information Act – but I really don’t want to have to do that – any school should be quick to send these notes when requested by a parent, it is public information that schools must make available upon request.”

Request 5

On June 20^th, Coyle wrote to Perks, with Newham council’s “information governance” team copied in, reminding him again of the request for meeting minutes.

His email began: “As you know, I have been waiting some time for the school to send me copies of the past year’s Governing body minutes – which you are legally obligated to send me…the fact that you have constantly ignored all requests does raise the issue of why not.”

He added: “Can you please, for the record, state if you intend to send me the minutes or not.”

In a response sent the same day, Perks wrote: “I do not intend to send you minutes of governors meetings in lieu of a face to face meeting. Once we have met I am more than happy to look at this further.”

Responding itself, Newham’s information governance team wrote back that it did not hold the school’s meeting minutes, adding: “My suggestion is you contact the school directly, as you have done already.”

Request 6 

Coyle then wrote back to Perks and Atashzai, stating that he wanted to meet them to discuss his concerns, and that “I have made it quite clear that for my background preparation, I want to see the gov body meeting minutes”. Coyle said the matter was now an issue of principle, and that he would be raising it with Ofsted.

Request 7

After the summer holidays, Coyle then emailed Perks on September 22^nd, 2019, pointing out that “I would still like to receive the discussed meeting notes”. He then said his child had talked of bad behaviour in one of his classes.

There was no response from Perks on this request for the meeting minutes, though he said the teacher of the class mentioned was “highly regarded”. This is the last exchange I have seen on the issue.

Coyle has now told Education Uncovered that he never received the minutes, and that, frustrated with the exchange and ending up unhappy with the leadership shown by Perks and Atashzai – “I lost all faith in them; I think the school should be shut down and restarted under new leadership,” he told me -  he moved his child from the school to another secondary in January last year. His second child also never joined ELSS, despite him having told Perks earlier in the correspondence that at that time he had been interesting in this child joining the school.

I sought a response from ELSS. Its vice-chair, Kevin Hinde, said the trust would follow up directly with Coyle. I understand that it has now promised to send him the minutes.

I also asked ELSS for all trust minutes and associated agendas and papers from the start of 2019. It said it would provide them as soon as possible.

ELSS has been under pressure from the government to join a multi-academy trust, in a move which would spell its end as a standalone institution. However, there are no indications as yet that this is about to happen.

The school and Perks have sometimes seemed well-connected to Department for Education policymaking, including seemingly via Ofsted. ELSS was on a list of 23 schools controversially selected to appear in the second phase of research by the inspectorate in 2019, which informed its current inspection framework. Perks also featured on a DfE “expert panel” for the latter’s “curriculum fund pilots”, also in 2019.

The legal position

It is clear that at this school, as at others, providing parents with access to meeting minutes was not a matter of discussion or negotiation, but instead a legal requirement.

Coyle, having consulted governance sources, quoted from “School Governance Procedures” regulations dating to 2003. These state that: “The governing body must, as soon as reasonably practicable, make available for inspection by any interested person, a copy of” agendas, meeting minutes and discussion papers of any governing body meeting.

It seems to me, however, that these regulations, which were updated in 2013, only applied to local authority maintained schools, so would not cover ELSS, as it is a free school, which is a type of academy.

However, ELSS’s funding agreement – its legal contract with the Department for Education – states, at clause 121, that meeting agendas, minutes and associated discussion reports or papers must be “as soon as is reasonably practicable, made available at the Academy to persons wishing to inspect them”.

An identical clause features in the trust’s legal constitution, its articles of association, which by the way featured Perks and his wife as two of the trust’s three founding “members”, with the three of them thus constituting a majority of the original members of the trust, and with the members then allowed to appoint “up to 10 governors” of the school, thus giving them a control of ELSS’s governance.

It is clear, then, that Coyle had a legal right to see the minutes, even if it might have meant attending the school in person, with of course him being completely within his rights to say he wanted to conduct this viewing in advance of any meeting with Perks.

Snap analysis

As I’ve pointed out before, what stipulations England does have on school governance transparency seem weak compared to some other countries. Notably, it does not insist that governing body or governing board meetings are held in public, as can happen, for example, in countries such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

Instead, in England only governors – and such people as those governors may choose to invite – have any right to attend meetings.

The above countries’ much stronger transparency requirements rest on the notion that members of the public, and especially parents and pupils affected by schools’ decision-making, have rights to be as fully in the picture about that strategic decision-making as possible. Publicly-funded institutions, then, should be public in their decision-making.

As a much-less-good second-best option, schools could be required to post minutes, agendas and background papers of governing body meetings on their websites, shortly after those meetings have happened. But again, this is not a requirement in England.

But schools are still supposed to make such documents available if people ask for them.

So the fact that this school could effectively disregard this limited safeguard on public access to the detail of such meetings – if only via minutes available after the event – should be extra concerning. As a parent, and one who knows the governance system at that, Coyle was completely within his rights, and the school had no right to put any condition on release of the minutes.

Their release should – and, it seems, legally must - be a non-negotiable for schools.

*It has not been possible, actually, to locate the original request to see the minutes in this email trail. That said, it is clear that there were repeated requests: even if starting at “request one” above, the trust should have been supplying the minutes from there onwards.