Amanda Spielman has branded the existence of about 490 "stuck schools" that have been judged less than "good" since 2005 as “nothing short of a scandal”.

In a letter to the Commons Public Accounts Committee, published today, the chief inspector said Ofsted would carry out research to understand why interventions in these school had failed.

Ms Spielman highlighted a group of “intractable” schools that had performed poorly for a long time in last year’s Ofsted annual report.

In the letter to MPs she said further work this year had looked in more detail at the characteristics of these more-than 290 problem primaries and 190 secondaries.

Ms Spielman wrote that, in these schools, “the proportions of pupils who are eligible for free school meals and those who are white British pupils eligible for free school meals are well above the national average”, and “the proportion of stuck secondary schools varies considerably among different regions”.

She added: “That these schools remain poor for so long means that, for some children, in certain areas, there may be no opportunity to attend a good school at any point in their education.

"This is nothing short of a scandal and is a betrayal of children’s futures.”

The chief inspector raised concerns that “some of these schools were likely to have received a number of interventions from national and local schemes over the past decade and yet they have not achieved sustained improvement”.

She said the inspectorate would therefore conduct an evaluation project next year examining “why interventions designed to secure improvement, including inspection, have not been effective in some schools”.

Ms Spielman also repeated her comments that Ofsted inspectors had not seen any impact of funding pressures on education standards in schools.