Ruth Perry was the headteacher of one of Reading’s most popular primary schools for 13 years, the same school that she had attended as a child. Staff and colleagues described her as a rock: talented, capable and compassionate. Her GP testified that she had had no mental health issues over the previous 30 years.
But it took just two hours of an Ofsted inspection on the morning of 15 November last year to dissolve Ruth Perry’s capability and resolve, and turn her into a shaking, tearful wreck, barely able to speak. People who had worked alongside her for a decade said they had never seen her so upset.
