A former children’s commissioner for England has said lessons “needed to be learned” and improvements to professional practice “continue to be made”, following an lengthy inquiry into the case of two teenagers who plotted to carry out a Columbine-style shooting rampage at a North Yorkshire school.
Professor Maggie Atkinson has also announced a series of recommendations from a lessons learned inquiry into the events leading up to interventions with Northallerton schoolboys Thomas Wyllie and Alex Bolland and their families will be published more than two years after the boys were convicted of conspiracy to murder.
The move by North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP) follows repeated calls to publicly explain circumstances ahead of their arrests three days before Halloween in October 2017.
Parents in the market town have claimed they were issued with misleading information by a North Yorkshire County Council-maintained school well ahead of anti-terrorism police swooping to take the pupils into custody and have voiced frustration over the lack of answers being given by officials.
While headteachers, supported by governors, are regarded as lead professionals and are therefore responsible for day-to-day business of schools, local authorities have statutory duties to monitor overall standards and to hold schools to account.
The NYSCP, which includes North Yorkshire County Council, North Yorkshire Police and clinical commissioning groups, has confirmed its review into the case has been completed.
Jurors at the boys’ trial heard police investigating the teenagers found a diary espousing far-right wing ideology and the first page read: “If this is found I have committed one of the worst atrocities in British history or I killed myself.”
The trial also heard the teenagers were motivated by their “worship” of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people and themselves at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.
In May 2018 Wyllie was handed a 12-year custodial sentence while his co-defendant was given ten years after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
The NYSCP said some 11 recommendations from the inquiry will be published next month alongside “an update”, but the report itself will remain confidential as it contains sensitive and personal information relating to those involved.
The NYSCP has previously stated the findings of the review would only be published if the findings were considered to be in the public interest.
Prof Atkinson said: “In my role as former Safeguarding Children Board Chair and now as the Partnership’s Executive Chair and Independent Scrutineer, I have been kept informed in detail of all the work done by every service and agency concerned with this tragic and complex case.
“By law, I must seek concrete and detailed assurance that work such as that involved in this review is completed appropriately, professionally and sensitively. Were I not so assured I would, also by law, require further work that would give me that assurance. In this case, I am so assured.
“I am also clear that lessons that needed to be learned across the Partnership go on being learned, and improvements to professional practice have been – and will continue to be – made. Such improvements will also be reported to me at regular intervals.”
Stuart Carlton, the council’s director of children and young people’s services, said the events in 2017 and 2018 had been distressing and traumatic for everyone affected by the case.
He added the review’s recommendations would be incorporated into best practice and shared with safeguarding agencies.
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