An investigation has uncovered a series of concerns about how Brighton’s oldest school was run before a proposal was made to close it.
Parents made numerous complaints about safeguarding to the governors and to Brighton and Hove City Council and expressed frustration about a failure to act.
They said that several complaints – which also related to discrimination and the leadership at Middle Street Primary School – were made to the council’s education team as long ago as October 2024.
But many complaints were not properly or fully investigated until the governors were replaced by an “interim executive board” (IEB) last June. Most of the complaints have since been upheld.
Parents were then told that head teacher Rob Cooper, the subject of a number of the complaints, was on indefinite leave at the start of the current school year.
But pupil numbers continued to fall as parents removed their children from the school and the financial deficit continued to soar.
The board has since recommended the closure of the school because it is financially unsustainable but parents and staff accused the council of letting them down by failing to act sooner.
A public consultation about the closure proposal is currently under way, with the third and final question and answer session scheduled for 6pm today (Wednesday 4 March).
The meeting is online only after two in-person events where parents and staff voiced their concerns, highlighted previous complaints and asked questions which council representatives said they were unable to answer.
One complaint, concerning the conduct of Mr Cooper and a senior colleague, Dan Flinter, wasn’t investigated until last September, almost two years after it was first raised with the school’s former governing board.
The finding highlighted “systemic issues within the school’s safeguarding culture and governance oversight”.
The complaint had previously been sent to the LADO (local authority designated officer) and the head of education Richard Barker.
All elements bar one of the parent’s complaint were upheld or partially upheld.
Another parent said that she sent complaints to Mr Barker last February and March about Mr Cooper and the former board but she was told to complain to the governors directly.
She said that she sent multiple emails to the board and to the council’s governor support team but the complaints were not investigated.
The parent asked Sian Berry, the MP for Brighton Pavilion, to intervene – and she is understood to have then contacted the school.
But the complaint wasn’t fully investigated until September 2025 when it was upheld.
The complainant was one of a group of parents who withdrew their children – eight pupils from a class of 21 – in November 2024 over concerns about safeguarding.
Parents later obtained their children’s school records by making “subject access requests” (SARs) and found that serious incidents had not been recorded in line with the law and guidance on keeping children safe.
One of the parents said: “I had physical evidence that the school was not recording the violent and distressing incidents which we had been complaining about and which the former board’s co-chairs had assured us had been known about, logged and dealt with.”
The IEB investigation found: “On scrutiny of the copy of the SAR you received from the school, it is clear that the incidents you referred to were not logged.”
It also said that a “log had obviously been added after your SAR had been processed and sent to you”.
The complaint also raised concerns about safeguarding on school trips to the beach. The findings revealed “There does not appear that there are clear expectations or guidelines about recording of incidents that occur off the school site.”
As part of the findings, a recommendation was made for a review into reporting and recording concerns and conversations and the school’s complaints process.
A freedom of information (FoI) request was sent to the council’s education team asking for the number of complaints and concerns received about Mr Cooper and about safeguarding at the school. The council replied by saying: “No records held.”
A request to review the FoI response has been made.
At the most recent public meeting about the school’s closure, held on Wednesday 25 February, one current member of staff said that warnings had been raised many times but nothing was done.
He added that it would be an “insult” for the school to close without clarity over what had been going on.
A former parent spoke out and accused the former leadership at the school of being to blame for its rapid downfall.
He said that they had taken a thriving school that produced confident and creative young people to the brink of closure in just over two years.
The school had a budget of just over £1 million a year. It had a deficit of almost £9,000 in 2022-23, rising to £118,000 the following year and £256,000 in 2024-25.
The forecast deficit for the current financial year is £425,000 – and given the drop in pupil numbers, the budget will be much smaller, making the deficit almost impossible to clear.
Benchmarking data from the government’s Department for Education (DfE) showed that much of this debt arose from agency staffing costs linked to the school’s high levels of staff turnover and staff absence.
When Mr Barker was asked why complaints and concerns about Mr Cooper’s conduct had not been passed on to the IEB, he said that this would have been the role of the outgoing board of governors.
Anne Allison, who chairs the IEB, said that it had been brought in to deal with a “financial situation” and the new board had been optimistic about the school’s future as recently as December.
She said that the board had a plan to pay off the debt and keep the school operating. But an exodus of pupils after the Christmas holidays rendered the plan impossible, leaving the IEB with no choice but to recommend closure.
Mr Barker told those at both of the first two consultation meetings that he could not answer questions about individuals.
To join the online consultation meeting this evening, click here.
The consultation is due to close next Monday (9 March), with a report scheduled to be presented to the council’s cabinet on Thursday 19 March.
A petition has been started to try to save the school. To read what it says or to sign it, click here.
Brighton and Hove News has tried to contact Mr Cooper and has sent questions to him in writing but no reply had been received at the time of publication.
Another school closure under new labour who promised in their manifesto to keep schools open. Never trust new labour.
Did you actually read the article? It is the head teacher who bullied everyone out of this school, both staff and families. He was so controlling that he himself was investigating complaints about himself and his board was okay with that. He never should have been allowed to work there.
“I am dismayed that Robert Cooper Headteacher has been able to become head of another school. He was dismissed from Comberbach Primary School in Cheshire due to fraud. Misappropriation of school budget and altering test results. I was under the impression he would be unable to work in education ever again and yet here he is again.”
I’ve heard several rumours of how Rob Cooper left his old school in disgrace. Here we go again. There are serious questions to be asked here how Mr Cooper was recruited in the first place. Surely there must be rigorous checks prior to appointing a new head. Surely Cheshire Council had to pass on that info. Surely references had to be watertight. So how could this have happened – twice? And why does the council seem to be trying to make this go away – having dismissed it as simply a financial issue. Multiple complaints against Mr Cooper had been sent, but ignored, and as a result it seems he has crashed the school, and it’s the tax payer who picks up the bill.
My children attended that school, and it was previously a wonderful creative place. When Mr Cooper arrived, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Quickly however I watched nearly all the old staff disappear amid rumours of bullying, followed by an exodus of parents because they were being bullied by Mr Cooper, and very serious safeguarding issues: Children going missing at beach school, knives being brought into school, children being regularly assaulted. Along with others, I sadly took my child out of Middle Street Primary School a while ago, directly because of Rob Cooper. It’s such a shame to see what has happened, and to me it could have very much been prevented, way before arriving at a point where you have a run on a school.
This is not to do with Labour. It is to do with dysfunctional institutional processes that enabled a bad, manipulative man who had no business being in a school let alone running it, to get the top job and then hang on in there until he’d driven the school into ground and many people – parents, staff and children – to the edge. What the Labour council can do now is ensure that what happened is fully known and understood so that we can ensure that it never happens again. And to all those who might pop up once again to say – but my child was fine – lucky you.
It is very frustrating to know that after everything Rob Cooper done he is still on payroll and I would not be surprised if he’ll be paid off to “leave”, or get some sort of redundancy after school closure.
This man had put so many families at misery, we all had to deal with his poor decisions and eventually leave. Help came a little too late, and he got away with too much of gross misconduct.
Always blaming rob cooper he is not aloud to respond to anyone at the moment but he will when aloud look at the senior staff now that’s why your school is going the children loved the school but some parents made it a vedetor about rob and there little group destroyed the school I worked for rob and would again in a heart beat if he did something really bad trust me he would not still be getting payed
Is that you Rob? Because I doubt anyone who has worked with you or for you has a good word to say at the moment- except of course for family members you employed!!!
Maybe you could give your side of the story to the press as they say they have been trying to contact you- along with a large number of staff who will likely lose their jobs and children and parents who have lost their school who I am sure have some questions for you.
You could then also answer all the questions about your previous job and what happened there.
And also how you led a successful and well respected school and ran it into the ground.
You could also explain what you are doing now and why you are not in the school dealing with the disaster you created rather than sitting at home and hiding behind a keyboard and blaming those who actually are dealing with your mess.