QB-2022-002971 - [2025] EWHC 2445 (KB)

Evidence as to Buckswood School’s relevant policies and procedures

The school’s First Aid Policy included the following:

“Where staff provide first aid to staff, students, contractors, visitors they must record the accident, injury and treatment details on a School Accident, Incident, Near Miss & Dangerous Occurrence Report Form and return the completed form to the Health & Safety Manager.

Where an accident has occurred and a student is injured, parents should be contacted as soon as possible.”

Irune Pedrayes’s evidence was that she did not use any kind of illicit drug before going to the school, although she says she did smoke tobacco occasionally during weekends. She says that there was “easy access to substances” at the school and that she “started using drugs … a few weeks after my arrival”. In her oral evidence she said that she did not think that the school implemented its rules in relation to drugs, but when pressed by Mr Edwards, she was vague on the details as to why she thought this, but her evidence was that her schools in Spain were stricter. She did not recall any patrols, she did not recall cleaners cleaning her room and did not remember whether any parts of the local town were out of bounds. She did, however, remember Mr Samson checking rooms. In re-examination she explained, in relation to discipline, that it depended on the member of staff who caught you doing something wrong, some were more tolerant than others.

As noted at [14] above, the Claimant also served a witness statement from a Ms Callis, who was 21 years old at the time she provided her statement in June 2024. Ms Callis had attended the Buckswood School for her sixth form from 2018 to 2020 and, also a Spanish student, was in the same boarding house as Ms Irune Pedrayes. Her evidence was that some students, from about the age of 16, would consume substances ranging from “alcohol to cigarettes and vapes to weed and magic”, both in the school grounds and when they went to town at the weekend. She said that “magic” could be purchased on-line and “you could put a few drops of [it] in your vape and gave you a high during 30 minutes, everyone loved it because it didn’t smell, it took a small quantity to make effect and it was easy to consume”.

In her statement Ms Callis says that “there were many measures taken [by] teachers” to try to control the use of drugs at the school and she provides some details. She says that (a) there were parts of the school which were “out of bounds” at certain times; (b) that every time the students went into town on Saturdays their bags were checked on arrival back at school to make sure students had not bought anything illicit; and (c) “the same thing went for packages, every time a student received a package they should have to open it in front of a headmaster, or person of authority” and (d) “there were regular tests too” including “drug tests for people who were under suspicion from some teachers and alcohol tests were also conducted” … and (e) “another measure teachers took was to conduct “inspections” … every morning where a headmaster would walk by each student’s room to check that everything was in order, but more “thorough” inspections were conducted if there was any basis for them”.

The Claimant also relied on the witness statement of Cristina Fernandez, a Spanish student at the school with Irune in 2019. She said that “alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, “magic” etc” were consumed at the school and on school trips and that “they were also consumed freely, since student had easy access to them” and “the supervision of teachers was not very strict”. She said that as a result of “Irune’s incident on 30 September” the teachers at the school “began to check what we bought on our outings to the village”.

Ms McTague placed some weight on an Ofsted report on the school of January 2019. The relevant paragraph reads: “There is a strong link between safeguarding procedures, behaviour management and teaching in PSHE. Recent concerns about students using drugs have led to changes in risk assessments and supervision arrangements for ‘town leave’ and to enhancements in the PSHE curriculum. Overseas students have been made aware of the legal implications of drug use and possession in the United Kingdom”. It also noted that “Leaders are challenging and changing a culture of relaxed expectations, especially with older students. Appropriate use of exclusion for serious events is giving a clear message and keeping other pupils safe. Leaders are now establishing higher expectations of behaviour across the school”. The “overall outcome” of the report was that “the school meets all of the independent school standards that were checked during this inspection”. The “boarding provision outcome” was that “the school meets all the national minimum standards that were checked during this inspection”. Ms McTague emphasised the reference to the “recent concerns about students using drugs”. Mr Edwards, naturally, emphasised the steps recorded as being taken by the school to deal with those problems.

Mr Samson’s evidence was that he had personally drafted the school’s “Drugs and Alcohol Misuse/Education Policy” of 2018. The Claimant does not criticise the content of the policy itself to any significant degree, but rather focuses on alleged lack of enforcement of the policy.

The school also had a “Screening, Searching and Confiscation” policy; authorised staff have the power to search students or their possessions, including without consent, where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that a student might have a prohibited item, such as alcohol, illegal drugs or tobacco. Mr Samson summarised the position as follows: “under the policy, where alcohol, illegal drugs or potentially harmful substances are found, whilst there is no legal requirement to do so, Buckswood School may inform parents especially if the matter is sufficiently serious or could be potentially harmful to the student or the school”.

Mr Samson’s evidence was that “vaping was and remains a nationwide issue with the growth of this somewhat unregulated market” and that “vapes are harder to detect due to the lack of smell”. He explained that “we have to have a good reason to search a student and/or their possessions.” His evidence was that cleaners would regularly clean rooms and report any issues of concern, but that there were no such reports in respect of Irune Pedrayes’s room.

Mr Samson said that the school found that some students were ordering “magic” online and that they “remained extra vigilant, closely monitoring them when opening any packages which had been ordered to the school. Following this, some students tried to organise delivery to alternative addresses (parents of day students for example) so we had to work to stop this as well.”

His evidence was that when students went on trips to town on Saturday two or three members of staff would be “in attendance” and that in each boarding house there was a map showing where they could and could not go. I have seen a risk assessment dated 11 September 2017 detailing risks associated with visits to the town by students, including the risks of purchasing alcohol and cannabis, with preventative steps being identified as restrictions on town leave for offenders.

Mr Samson stated that there was a rota for staff to “patrol” the school grounds, but that the site was 40 acres and so there were always places that students could hide from a patrolling teacher. He emphasised that “we are a school and not a prison”.

Mr Samson’s evidence was that he would invite the police to attend the school to talk about issues such as smoking and drugs once a year or sometimes more. It is clear that he had protracted communications with the police in the days and weeks following the incidents of 27-29 September 2019. I have seen an email from Mr Samson of 7 October 2019 to Sussex police notifying them that “we have suspended 4 boys this week for testing positive to cannabis. They have told me that one of their friends at school has a phone number of someone in town who gets it for them. I have run a detection dog around the school today and found no sign of the drug in student rooms or in known hiding places so my next port of call is you in the hope that you might be interested in coming to school to interview the boys who can hopefully provide some intelligence on how they are getting this stuff and perhaps who has the phone number and therefore what the number is which might help with Sussex police and the work you are doing on County Lines”.

I have also seen a redacted email of 11 October 2019 from Mr Samson to an (anonymised) student’s parent or guardian asking them to withdraw the student from school and identifying that he had been “implicated as being involved with drug usage here at the school”. In her written statement Irune Pedrayes says that she was aware that the school expelled the boy who supplied her with the “magic” for possession of the drug.

An email from Mr Samson to the police of 21 October records that there had been two separate dog searches of the school arranged by Mr Samson with a specialist company, the first on 7 October and the second on 18 October. The first search appears to have revealed some traces of cannabis in various locations, some cannabis resin and some empty packets in the garden behind a boarding house.

In a series of subsequent emails in mid-October Mr Samson assisted the police in trying to identify and deal with drug-related issues and the sources of supply of drugs to students. He also contacted the police in early 2020 about problems relating to vapes with additives with a “hallucinatory or cannabis-like effect”, described the difficulties faced by the school in trying to detect and control such use, and asked for any advice the police could provide, including advice on testing kits or other approaches. There were several exchanges of emails with the police, but, in summary, the police responded by saying that it was not a police matter and they were not in a position to provide guidance.