The investigation also uncovered historic allegations of corporal punishment, exorcisms being performed on children and schoolgirls being “groomed” for marriage to much older men.
Inspectors say they fear “children are at risk” at some schools after finding in some ACE institutions safeguarding plans to be flawed or non-existent and that staff who come into contact with children sometimes have not undergone background checks to see if they are safe to work with children.
The Independent previously revealed allegations by former pupils that children were subject to serious mistreatment at some of the schools, which are operated by fundamentalist Christian communities and teach more than a thousand pupils at 26 different ACE schools in the UK.
Following The Independent’s investigation, 10 ACE schools were visited by Ofsted inspectors in October and nine of the schools have now been downgraded from “good” or “outstanding” to “inadequate” or “requires improvement”. In inspection reports seen by The Independent, the watchdog raises serious concerns about child protection failures, warning they are failing to meet official safeguarding regulations to protect children. A damning report of one of the schools concludes that “children are at risk”.
However, former pupils have told The Independent that the reports do not go far enough and say the Government must be held to account for allowing the schools to operate for so long. They have called for a government inquiry into how “generations of children were failed”.
