Parents’ complaints to Ofsted about their children’s remote learning resulted in school inspections on fewer than 10 occasions during the national lockdown, new figures reveal.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson had said that the watchdog would enforce the government’s remote learning expectations and that parents who were unhappy could complain to the watchdog.

New figures show that the vast majority of complaints - more than 98 per cent - did not result in Ofsted inspecting the schools in question.

Ofsted received 590 complaints from parents about the remote education that their children were receiving during the national lockdown from January to March.

The inspectorate would not say exactly how many inspections resulted from these complaints but said that it was fewer than 10.

Gavin Williamson: Parents can complain to Ofsted about remote learning offer

Praise: Parents send messages of support about schools’ remote learning to Ofsted

Ofsted: Inspectorate won’t say how many emails praising schools it has received

At the start of the most recent national lockdown, Mr Williamson had said that parents could report schools to Ofsted if they were unhappy with their children’s remote learning.

Ofsted remote learning inspections

He told MPs that the mandatory duty placed on schools to provide remote learning would be “enforced” by the watchdog, which would inspect schools if it had serious concerns about the quality of this provision.

Mr Williamson said that if parents were unhappy with the remote learning offer, they should first raise this with their child’s teacher or headteacher, and, failing that, report the matter to Ofsted.

However, his comments actually led to the watchdog being inundated with thousands of messages of support from parents about their children’s education.

In less than a week after Mr Williamson’s comment, Ofsted had received 11,000 messages from parents about their children’s learning, with the vast majority being positive.

An Ofsted spokesperson said that between 6 January and 5 March, the last day before schools opened to all pupils, it had received 590 complaints.

They added: “Our policy for managing complaints about schools remains unchanged. However, as a first step in handling these particular complaints, HMI contacted most of the schools directly to advise that we had received a complaint about their remote provision, and to seek a response.

“This allowed us to quickly seek assurances that national guidance about remote education was being followed.

“HMI then decided whether or not to progress the complaint under the normal Complaints about Schools (CAS) process. The vast majority of these calls did not identify any concerns that could trigger an inspection, and the cases were closed.

“In a very small number of cases, HMI did find reason to believe that the school was not following the guidance, and these concerns led to an inspection.”