It growed and growed like Topsy

The Department attempted to extricate itself from its uncertainty as to whether we were providing full time education by passing the ball to OFSTED. They arranged for inspectors to make an unannounced visit to Tyndale Academy in the autumn. As it turned out OFSTED informed us of the visit a few weeks ahead of time. The purpose of this visit was to ascertain whether we were providing full time education for five or more pupils of compulsory school age. If we were then we would be guilty of "running an unregistered independent school". Before the inspection HMI asked for various documents such as names and addresses of children. Some of these documents were refused on the grounds of confidentiality but otherwise we made it clear that the inspectors were welcome.
Two of them came along on 17th November 2005 and spent the whole day with us. We made it clear that we believed they were only there to ascertain whether we were providing full time education. They made it equally clear that they had wider responsibilities and powers. The day went very well and in fact an excellent and detailed report (not for our eyes) was sent to the DFES. We gained sight of it later under the Freedom of Information Act.

At the end of the day the inspectors asked about the discipline policy of the school (at the time we were unaware that the Department had asked them to find out details of our policy which they knew included corporal discipline). This policy involves an occasional smack to the hand with the hand for deliberate misbehaviour and is exercised only with parental consent.
The inspectors made it clear that they felt that the relations between children and teachers was good and gave no cause for concern . They added that had they felt there was cause for concern they would have been duty bound to relate this to the local authority.

The inspectors commented that our setting of homework when considered alongside the fact that even our breaktimes were educationally productive meant that we were full time. This conclusion was directly contrary to the Department's guidance (Circuler 7/90) on what constitutes "taught time" and the inspectors own guidance which holds that less than 18 hours cannot be considered full time (ROIEJ/OFSTED). The inspectors were apparently unaware of either and made no reference to them. Nevertheless they wrote to the DFES saying that in their judgement we were providing full time education "of a rather good quality at that".