A controversial press report into a college Ofsted report has resulted in the publication of pages of unedited reader letters in protest – and a 2,200-word column written by the editor to set the record straight.

The front page report in the Bath Chronicle on July 4, headlined “Dull – Official verdict on college teaching”, failed to hit the spot with staff and students at City of Bath College.

The college had come through a difficult period and was keen to get the latest Government report on its activities into the public arena.

But when Chronicle journalists read through the document it found a number of stories itching to get out.

It would be a big education story in what is a very academic city.

But the backlash led editor Sam Holliday to take unusual action, telling readers: “I am very conscious of the fact that many people think we got our reporting wrong on this story and let the college, and our readers down.

“This is something I, and my staff, obviously take very seriously, and I will try to deal with many of these important points.”

He told holdthefrontpage today: “The ‘dull’ line was a very unusual line – and at the editorial conference we all got quite excited about it.”

But college bosses disagreed with the paper over its angle, and were in the editor’s office the next morning.

That day, the Chronicle published its first page of critical reader letters, including one from the Students’ Union defending the college. Then it printed the whole of the Ofsted summary to let readers decide for themselves on the inspectors’ verdict – and yet more letters from the readers.

There have been three full pages full of unedited critical letters about the reports as well as summaries of comments made on the Internet.

“The irony of this is that we have printed ten times as many critical words about ourselves than we had done about the college,” said Sam.

“Our mitigation is the fact that we never said the words that upset them so much – it was Ofsted that reported this.

“We interpreted and emphasised the report in a way people objected to, but I genuinely feel that those who wrote to complain about the Chronicle’s story should also direct their anger at Ofsted.

“But the volume of the response has made us look at ourselves and our attitude to this. We have to behave and respond when we feel we are out of tune with readers.”

In his Chronicle article yesterday, the editor wrote: “I would like to sincerely apologise to anybody from the City of Bath College who felt hurt by the report that the Bath Chronicle produced.

“I passionately believe that newspapers should support and champion all their local institutions and, where possible, try to be as positive as we can about the things that affect people’s life in this community.

“With my positive view on our role in the community, it has obviously been very difficult for me to see the attacks that have been made on the Chronicle about our reporting of the college Ofsted.

“The claims have come thick and fast – that we have deliberately tried to sensationalise things, that we have accentuated the negative and that we have recklessly caused harm. To put it mildly these words have made me wince because they are exactly the kind of things that I say that anger me about other newspapers and which are miles away from the concept of what I believe a local newspaper should be.

“If we then look at the report that has caused such ire, I will put my hand up and admit, and apologise, for the fact that the headline of our story – which focused on ‘dull’ teaching – and the first few paragraphs that followed it did NOT fully convey the overall nature of the Ofsted report on the college.

“When faced with such a report, it is journalistic instinct to find out what is unusual or different about a story. If news can be described as something unusual or out of the ordinary.

“My senior team and I have (professionally) probably seen scores of Ofsted reports between us in our time – and as both a parent and a former school governor I know all about how they word things – but all of us can all honestly say we had never seen the phrase “much of the teaching is dull” in an Ofsted before.

“Therefore, that line became the quirky ‘note’ that we decided to lead our story on. I now accept, fully, that this one line did not fully represent the entire Ofsted report.”

His article also conveyed an apology to the current college chiefs who were inadvertently linked with previous management failures for which they were not to blame.

Angry correspondents had written in to say: