My sister, Ruth Perry, took her own life on 8 January 2023, 54 days after an Ofsted inspection of her school that the Coroner described as ‘rude and intimidating.’
Ruth was an exceptional, well-regarded and highly experienced headteacher. She was also a much-loved wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. She had no prior history of mental ill health. She leaves a terrible, unfillable void in the lives of so many.
Since Ruth’s death, we have been campaigning for much-needed reform of Ofsted’s punitive schools inspection system, to prioritise the welfare of school leaders and teachers, as well as of children.
Rather than attempt to summarise now nearly 18 months of relentless battles, I encourage you to watch the BBC documentary, Death of a Head, about Ruth, her death, the inquest and the first 11 months of our fight for justice in Ruth’s name and for all teachers and school leaders.
An added cruel twist to my family’s experience came just days before the inquest was due to start, in November 2023, when we were informed that our application for Legal Aid had been refused.
This meant we would potentially have to face the gruelling ordeal of an inquest without legal representation or somehow have to foot the bill ourselves: and this, even though the other three interested parties – Ofsted, Reading Borough Council, Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust – as public bodies, would have their substantial legal costs paid for from the public purse.
We were not the only ones to see the injustice of this situation. We were not the only ones who wanted Ofsted to be held to account for the terrible damage it has done to our family and to so many others.
We launched a crowdfunder to cover our legal costs and, within a matter of days, had raised just short of £90,000 – nearly double our target! Our sincere and enduring thanks go to every one of the nearly six thousand members of the public who so generously donated to our crowdfunder.
Thanks to their generosity, the expertise of our wonderful legal team, and the brilliant Senior Coroner for Berkshire, Heidi Connor, damning Prevention of Future Deaths reports were issued to Ofsted, the Department for Education and Reading Borough Council. Each of these reports sets out a series of recommendations for urgent actions to prevent similar, preventable deaths from happening in the future.
These recommendations gave our family hope that lessons would be learnt from Ruth’s death and urgent actions taken to ensure a similar tragedy could not happen again.
There have, indeed, been some positive changes to Ofsted’s brutal schools inspection system: the removal of the inhumane confidentiality requirement; more rapid re-inspections of schools with minor safeguarding issues that can be easily rectified; a helpline number to raise concerns during an inspection; a policy on pausing inspections when a school leader is distressed; increased psychological support for school leaders; and mental health training for inspectors.
But these changes do not go far enough. They fail to address some of the fundamental concerns raised about the current inspection system.
Despite accepting the Coroner’s findings in full, and against the recommendations of a highly critical parliamentary inquiry, the Conservative government still refused to scrap dangerous and unreliable single-word judgements.
And Ofsted have only belatedly commissioned a former Head of Ofsted to lead an ‘independent’ learning review into Ofsted’s response to Ruth’s death. Ofsted have themselves established the Terms of Reference for the review, explicitly excluding ‘the judgements and policies relating to the Caversham inspection’. They have not committed to making the report public.
Ofsted’s wilful misinterpretation of one of the Coroner’s key recommendations seems to confirm her concerns that further deaths may occur if only ‘lip service’ is paid to learning from tragedies like Ruth’s.
Thanks to the public’s generosity, and as promised, we have been able to donate nearly £40,000 – i.e. the excess money raised, once our legal bill has been settled – to INQUEST.
We hope that others will join us in supporting INQUEST’s following campaigns – each of which, sadly, is particularly pertinent to our own experiences of state bodies’ inadequate responses to Ruth’s death and to the lessons that must be learnt from it:
Legal Aid for Inquests
This campaign calls for automatic non-means-tested legal aid funding to families for specialist legal representation following a state-related death.
This would cover preparation and representation for bereaved families at the inquest and other legal processes. It would also ensure families can access funding equivalent to that enjoyed by state bodies/public authorities and corporate bodies represented.
The inequality of arms between bereaved families and publicly-funded state bodies is the most significant injustice in the coronial system – as the Coroner at Ruth’s inquest explicitly acknowledged.
This campaign highlights the current lack of any national system to oversee or enforce recommendations made following inquests, inquiries or other reviews.
Potentially life-saving recommendations are too often forgotten, dismissed or simply not implemented. This leads to yet more preventable deaths and harms.
We need a National Oversight Mechanism to ensure vital recommendations are collated, analysed and followed up, in order to protect lives.
This campaign seeks to compel public authorities to tell the truth.
As recent public inquiries – into the Grenfell Tower fire, the Infected Blood scandal, Bloody Sunday, the Post Office scandal, as well as the Hillsborough disaster – have shown, public bodies are far too often more concerned about protecting their own reputations than about uncovering the truth. This is definitely the case with Ofsted too.
A Hillsborough Law would enforce a duty of candour on state authorities whose activities impact on public safety.
In Ruth’s name, we shall continue to push for radical reform of Ofsted’s punitive, dangerous schools inspection system and of a defensive institutional culture that, in resisting accountability, continues to put the lives of those Ofsted inspects at risk.
Make a Donation
Every year, INQUEST supports hundreds of families bereaved by deaths involving the state. We are independent of government and entirely reliant on grants and donations to continue our vital work.
Support us and bereaved families in the fight for truth, justice and accountability by becoming a regular donor today.
Donate now
Subscribe to our newsletter
To receive the latest news from INQUEST straight into you inbox please subscribe. For examples of what you will receive, see our previous newsletters.
My Sister, Ruth Perry
by Julia Waters
My sister, Ruth Perry, took her own life on 8 January 2023, 54 days after an Ofsted inspection of her school that the Coroner described as ‘rude and intimidating.’
Ruth was an exceptional, well-regarded and highly experienced headteacher. She was also a much-loved wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. She had no prior history of mental ill health. She leaves a terrible, unfillable void in the lives of so many.
Since Ruth’s death, we have been campaigning for much-needed reform of Ofsted’s punitive schools inspection system, to prioritise the welfare of school leaders and teachers, as well as of children.
Rather than attempt to summarise now nearly 18 months of relentless battles, I encourage you to watch the BBC documentary, Death of a Head, about Ruth, her death, the inquest and the first 11 months of our fight for justice in Ruth’s name and for all teachers and school leaders.
An added cruel twist to my family’s experience came just days before the inquest was due to start, in November 2023, when we were informed that our application for Legal Aid had been refused.
This meant we would potentially have to face the gruelling ordeal of an inquest without legal representation or somehow have to foot the bill ourselves: and this, even though the other three interested parties – Ofsted, Reading Borough Council, Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust – as public bodies, would have their substantial legal costs paid for from the public purse.
We were not the only ones to see the injustice of this situation. We were not the only ones who wanted Ofsted to be held to account for the terrible damage it has done to our family and to so many others.
We launched a crowdfunder to cover our legal costs and, within a matter of days, had raised just short of £90,000 – nearly double our target! Our sincere and enduring thanks go to every one of the nearly six thousand members of the public who so generously donated to our crowdfunder.
Thanks to their generosity, the expertise of our wonderful legal team, and the brilliant Senior Coroner for Berkshire, Heidi Connor, damning Prevention of Future Deaths reports were issued to Ofsted, the Department for Education and Reading Borough Council. Each of these reports sets out a series of recommendations for urgent actions to prevent similar, preventable deaths from happening in the future.
These recommendations gave our family hope that lessons would be learnt from Ruth’s death and urgent actions taken to ensure a similar tragedy could not happen again.
There have, indeed, been some positive changes to Ofsted’s brutal schools inspection system: the removal of the inhumane confidentiality requirement; more rapid re-inspections of schools with minor safeguarding issues that can be easily rectified; a helpline number to raise concerns during an inspection; a policy on pausing inspections when a school leader is distressed; increased psychological support for school leaders; and mental health training for inspectors.
But these changes do not go far enough. They fail to address some of the fundamental concerns raised about the current inspection system.
Despite accepting the Coroner’s findings in full, and against the recommendations of a highly critical parliamentary inquiry, the Conservative government still refused to scrap dangerous and unreliable single-word judgements.
And Ofsted have only belatedly commissioned a former Head of Ofsted to lead an ‘independent’ learning review into Ofsted’s response to Ruth’s death. Ofsted have themselves established the Terms of Reference for the review, explicitly excluding ‘the judgements and policies relating to the Caversham inspection’. They have not committed to making the report public.
Ofsted’s wilful misinterpretation of one of the Coroner’s key recommendations seems to confirm her concerns that further deaths may occur if only ‘lip service’ is paid to learning from tragedies like Ruth’s.
Thanks to the public’s generosity, and as promised, we have been able to donate nearly £40,000 – i.e. the excess money raised, once our legal bill has been settled – to INQUEST.
We hope that others will join us in supporting INQUEST’s following campaigns – each of which, sadly, is particularly pertinent to our own experiences of state bodies’ inadequate responses to Ruth’s death and to the lessons that must be learnt from it:
This campaign calls for automatic non-means-tested legal aid funding to families for specialist legal representation following a state-related death.
This would cover preparation and representation for bereaved families at the inquest and other legal processes. It would also ensure families can access funding equivalent to that enjoyed by state bodies/public authorities and corporate bodies represented.
The inequality of arms between bereaved families and publicly-funded state bodies is the most significant injustice in the coronial system – as the Coroner at Ruth’s inquest explicitly acknowledged.
Learn more
This campaign highlights the current lack of any national system to oversee or enforce recommendations made following inquests, inquiries or other reviews.
Potentially life-saving recommendations are too often forgotten, dismissed or simply not implemented. This leads to yet more preventable deaths and harms.
We need a National Oversight Mechanism to ensure vital recommendations are collated, analysed and followed up, in order to protect lives.
Learn more
This campaign seeks to compel public authorities to tell the truth.
As recent public inquiries – into the Grenfell Tower fire, the Infected Blood scandal, Bloody Sunday, the Post Office scandal, as well as the Hillsborough disaster – have shown, public bodies are far too often more concerned about protecting their own reputations than about uncovering the truth. This is definitely the case with Ofsted too.
A Hillsborough Law would enforce a duty of candour on state authorities whose activities impact on public safety.
LEARN MORE
In Ruth’s name, we shall continue to push for radical reform of Ofsted’s punitive, dangerous schools inspection system and of a defensive institutional culture that, in resisting accountability, continues to put the lives of those Ofsted inspects at risk.
Make a Donation
Every year, INQUEST supports hundreds of families bereaved by deaths involving the state. We are independent of government and entirely reliant on grants and donations to continue our vital work.
Support us and bereaved families in the fight for truth, justice and accountability by becoming a regular donor today.
Donate now
Subscribe to our newsletter
To receive the latest news from INQUEST straight into you inbox please subscribe. For examples of what you will receive, see our previous newsletters.