A SPECIAL debate is to be held in the House of Commons on calls for a radical reform of school inspection procedures after complaints from a North-East school.

Headteacher Colin Linthwaite and the governors of Belmont Primary School, in Guisborough, east Cleveland, felt that their school inspection was carried out unfairly and inadequately.

A central issue of concern was that the registered school inspector and the quality assurance manager were husband and wife.

The case has been taken up by the town's MP, Ashok Kumar, who will be leading the debate on Monday evening.

He said: "There was concern by the school that, in their complaints to Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education), they had to contend with the fact that the person who had to deal with complaints made an inspection in which his wife was centrally involved."

Mr Kumar wants ministers to consider altering the rules that govern bodies such as Ofsted, to provide some form of separation of inspectors and quality assurance managers, in order to prevent similar potential for conflicts of interest occurring in the future.

"I am pleased that Belmont School has now recovered from what was a bruising process, and indeed recent inspections by bodies such as Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools has confirmed that it is a successful and popular school," Mr Kumar said.

"However, there is still the issue of seeing that an experience such as the one that Belmont School went through is not repeated."