Special measures verdict for free school name-checked by Nick Gibb throws spotlight on how it was founded

Questions are being asked about how the former headteacher of a free school was allowed to found the organisation without, it appears, headship experience –and why Ofsted failed to report in the past any side-effects of its longstanding practice of getting pupils to sit internal exams throughout the year.

The questions come after East London Science School, which was set up in 2013, which was praised alongside Michaela Community School by the former schools minister Nick Gibb back in 2015 and which had links to other senior Conservative figures and to the libertarian publication Spiked, was put in special measures by the inspectorate.

On Friday, Ofsted published its verdict on the East London Science School (ELSS) – more than five months after a team of six Her Majesty’s Inspectors had inspected the secondary in Newham, the delay hinting at an unsuccessful behind-the-scenes challenge to the inspectorate’s damning verdict.

The inspection presented a devastating assessment of the school, which has been beset by problems over the past year, centring on a Department for Education Financial Notice to Improve which had raised the prospect of the school changing trust, though this was successfully resisted. In June, days before inspectors visited, the school’s founding principal, David Perks, was put on a “leave of absence,” having disagreed with the government about its stance at the time on mask-wearing in class.

Among the findings in Ofsted’s new report were that: