Schoolteacher murder report is blasted by husband

Don Maguire told the BBC he felt the “bare minimum” had been done in producing the report that found her death could not have been predicted or pre-empted.

The Scholes-born 61-year-old was teaching at Corpus Christi College in Leeds when she was stabbed during a Spanish lesson by Will Cornick. The teen had threatened to kill the mother of two in social media posts and told peers he also planned to murder his head of year and another teacher and her unborn baby.

Cornick was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years after pleading guilty to the murder.

The report by independent reviewer Nick Page, who interviewed the killer, concluded: “No individual other than Will Cornick should in any way feel responsible for Ann’s murder.”

However Mr Maguire told the Victoria Derbyshire programme that no-one was any better informed by the Learning Lessons Review.

Until all the circumstances of her death were fully appraised “it’s possible that lives could be at risk in British schools”, he said. “This shouldn’t be about trying to make everything seem OK and hoping it doesn’t happen again. They’re going through all this time and expense to find partial answers to these questions. If we really want to learn and protect teachers and pupils we have to know every detail of this case.”

Mark Peel, independent chairman of the Leeds Safeguarding Children Board (LCSB), which commissioned the review, said he fully accepted the Mr Page’s findings.

But Mr Maguire said: “For a teacher to be murdered by a pupil in a classroom in the UK means it should be treated in the most serious of manners. These kind of learning lessons reviews are always done when terrible events happen.

“And the departments always say it could have been prevented but not predicted. It feels like they’ve done the bare minimum.”

The LCSB told the BBC that its report had been conducted by a well-qualified independent reviewer and the review was “in no way less credible than a serious case review”.