Inspections of multi-academy trusts (MATs) will play an important part in the government deciding whether trusts are failing to meet national standards, Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has said.
It is right that MATs are held to account for the standards of education they provide, given that some receive hundreds of millions of pounds of public money, she told the Schools and Academies Show in London today.
The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that it wants all schools to be in, or moving towards, being in a MAT by 2030, and is set to launch a review this term on how trusts should be regulated.
Ms Spielman today elaborated on an indication, set out in Ofsted’s five-year strategy yesterday, that inspections of trusts will play a role in this.
She said today: “As trusts get bigger and play a more important role in the system, it is reasonable for them to have to adhere to national expectations.
“If a trust is being given, in some cases, hundreds of millions of pounds of public money for education, it’s right that it’s held to account for the quality of that education.”
She told the conference that, at the moment, trust-level regulation looks mainly at financial compliance and good governance “but not at education, which is the very reason trusts exist in the first place”.
She added: “The White Paper acknowledges this and starts to consider what the trust standards should cover.
“A future inspection regime should take this as its starting point because there does need to be a way for government to decide when trusts are failing to meet standards.
‘Tough but important decisions’ on MATs
She said the government “has tough but important decisions to make about when and how to intervene when standards are not high enough”.
Inspection outcomes “will be an important input as they already are for schools,” she added.
Ofsted has repeatedly called to have the power to be able to inspect multi-academy trusts.
Ms Spielman said today that “any inspection of trusts will be built on the pillars of substance and integrity on which the school inspection framework is founded”.
‘Learn lessons’ from past SEND reforms
In Ms Spielman’s speech today, she also welcomed the announcement of the government’s SEND Green Paper last month, but warned that lessons should be learned from the 2014 reforms, which experienced problems with delivery.
The DfE has announced a series of new proposals, which it is consulting upon, including the creation of a set of national standards for SEND provision, and standardising the education health and care plan application process.
Ms Spielman said: “These changes are long overdue. Our [SEND area] inspections have highlighted that too many children are failed by the SEND system. We have reported on flaws, inconsistencies and delays. And these have been made worse by the pandemic.
“Approaches to diagnosis, support and funding vary too widely across the country and I am pleased that this is what the government is trying to address.”
The 2014 SEND reforms, Ms Spielman said, “had essentially the same aims but translating them into practice proved difficult”.
She said the “devil will be in the detail” of the government’s plan for new national standards in SEND.
Performance data just ‘one input’ into inspections
Ms Spielman’s speech also touched on the return of school performance data, which is being fed into Ofsted inspections this year for the first time during the pandemic.
She said: “Secondary results will be published this year but we fully understand that this will reflect the uneven impact of Covid as well as underlying school performance, and it’s still the case that performance data is only one input into inspections.”
Ms Spielman said that Ofsted would treat results “with more care” and added: “Our judgements aren’t now and won’t simply be a reflection of performance data.”
She added: “And while I am myth-busting I am also happy to emphasise that we don’t downgrade schools simply because pupils can’t remember the names of a few rivers in geography or because they struggle to explain a key concept in history.”
Ms Spielman defended talking to pupils as part of Ofsted’s inspection process.
She said it helps inspectors to gauge whether the schools’ intentions are “matched by what pupils actually know and understand”.
