The Chair of the Kent Catholic Schools Partnership wrote to parents of St Thomas Catholic Primary School on 17th June to inform them that the headteacher, Mrs Aquilina, was being given ‘special leave until the end of the academic year’. This followed a safeguarding incident which created considerable concern and debate, the absence being widely and reasonably assumed to be a formal suspension from her responsibilities because of the safeguarding issue.
On July 25th, at the end of the summer term, he wrote again ‘We have now reached the end of the academic year and can confirm that Mrs Aquilina will be returning to her role of Headteacher at St Thomas’ Primary on 1 September 2020…. A meeting with parents and carers of St Thomas’ will be held at the start of the new academic year’
Yesterday, 1st September, Mr Powis, the Chair of KCSP, wrote again to parents, to inform them that Mrs Aquilina will now be ‘on special leave for the foreseeable future’. The letter unsurprisingly contains no further explanation of the change of direction and no mention of the meeting for parents promised in the previous letter. This may be because of legal issues.
Although I don’t fully understand the reasons, my previous item about St Thomas’ is by some way the most read on this website over a short period that I can recall, with 19,850 hits in just ten weeks. It has also attracted an unprecedented number and length of comments at 85, many expressing robust opinions, and including three on my supplementary page about the Catholic Ordinariate. Indeed I have for the first time had to veto several of these comments because of the strong nature of allegations contained in them, surprising in a Christian context. It is clear that Mrs Aquilina and her husband, Father Aquilina the vicar of Westerham and Biggin Hill also on leave of absence from his post, attract strong views both for and against, which cannot itself be healthy for the school, or indeed his parish.
Although St Thomas’ is an academy in the KCSP, if the matter is a safeguarding one then ultimate responsibility lies with Kent County Council, although they are not mentioned in any of the correspondence.
I believe my previous article contains the key factors in this sad story, except that it has now been suggested a fresh matter has come to light which has led to the reversal of the previous decision to reinstate.