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"This was an unannounced inspection which took place onsite on 18 November 2025 between 12:00 and 19:30, 19 November between 08:50 and 19:30, 20 November between 08:50 and 14:00, 24 November between 08:50 and 19:30 and 25 November between 07:50 and 14:00. The inspection was carried out by six inspectors from the Care Inspectorate."

"The majority of students felt safe and were protected from harm. Those students who had difficult experiences were supported by staff and bullying was challenged."

The obvious dynamic of any bullying is that only some kids are bullied. Whether the "majority of students" feel safe is not the metric to be watching.

"It was a massive achievement for the school to be awarded UNICEF Gold accreditation as a rights respecting school. Considerable work went in to preparing for the award."

Wouldn't it have been a more of a "massive achievement" if little work was needed to secure the award? This award benefits the school, not the pupils, and it looks like considerable pupil labour was employed.

"The boarding houses continued to offer a high standard of accommodation and had recently undergone refurbishment. During the inspection there was quick response to issues raised by students, in relation to the environment, which was reinforced through the estates department prompt response to any identified repairs."

Translation: The pupils used the inspection to finally get a bunch of minor repairs done. Nice job, lads.

"We also fed back that younger students felt that some play equipment was not replaced quickly if it got broken such as the Xbox and lack of bats and balls for table tennis. In addition, some students found that showers were not as warm as they could be and the bathrooms were also cold, however recognised that this was due to the age of the building. This was also reflected in the temperature of the dorms, but students were clear that they could access extra duvets if required."

The school has no backups for basic and cheap play equipment (the table tennis bats and balls)? Cold dorms? A small space heater would fix that. Cold showers? Are the boilers turned to minimum? Water temperature from the boiler and taps has little to do with "the age of the building"—apparently the excuse provided to the pupils and repeated by the governors here. Sounds like the school is still as minimalist about comfort as it was in the 1980s.

"The recruitment policy reflected good practice guidance. We saw evidence that PVG and professional registration checks had been robustly carried out. However, a better system should be developed to ensure all references are received."

Why not just state what has gone wrong for them to need to make this comment? This is supposed to be a school inspection report, not a school brochure. The whole point of an inspection is to identify problems, not hint at them and gently suggest they should be fixed. This is unreal to read, less so I suppose when you remember the school wrote it.

"Student voices were present in some development plans, though overall we felt that this could be better evidenced in terms of the work that was being undertaken by the boarding school teams."

See above. We shouldn't read an inspection report and come away from it having obvious questions and wondering what the problem was. State the problem/limitation/failure in plain English. Don't dance around things.

The inspection hours were:
18 Nov: 12:00–19:30 = 7.5 hours
19 Nov: 08:50–19:30 = 10 hours 40 minutes
20 Nov: 08:50–14:00 = 5 hours 10 minutes
24 Nov: 08:50–19:30 = 10 hours 40 minutes
25 Nov: 07:50–14:00 = 6 hours 10 minutes
Total: 40 hours

The report does not say if the six unnamed inspectors inspecting the school were always present or if the six rotated in and out, or if different roles were assigned to different inspectors.

Regardless of how it breaks down, with a considerable 40 hours of inspection time at the school—an entire work week—some inspectors could have set up in a room and the entire Merchiston school roll of 400 boys aged 7-18 years could have been organized for one-on-one meetings with the inspectors. The report states that "we spoke with 80 students." This seems like a wasted opportunity.

Pupils would then have been able to give anonymous opinions without the presence of any immediate school staff or other pupils, in order to elicit maximum transparency and provide a comprehensive opportunity for whistleblowing? Given it's to members of Merchiston Castle School's own Board of Governors but still—you can work with this obvious limitation.

Remember, this inspection was written just five months—to the day—after the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry released its devastating report on Merchiston's historical abuse.

Nigel Parry, Research Hub Editor