The Department for Education tried to hide the fact that an unofficial Ofsted inspection that was not designed to hold schools to account was used to justify transferring an academy to a new sponsor.

The case is one of a series of revelations about secret inner workings of the academies programme that the DfE was only persuaded to disclose after an intervention by the Information Commissioner.

Yesterday, Tes revealed that the DfE had tried to conceal the fact that an education minister had urged an academy trust to expand rapidly, only for its quick growth to be raised as an “issue” two years later.

And on Tuesday, we showed how the DfE had attempted to censor the fact that an academy trust it wanted to take on a primary school had been under investigation by the Education Funding Agency.

Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, told Tes the material that was censored showed “a flagrant misuse of the Freedom of Information Act to cover up information that should be in the public domain”.

Rationale blacked-out

The cases emerged through previously censored papers from the 19 November 2015 meeting of the headteacher board (HTB) for the East of England and North-East London.

They show details of a proposal for Acle Academy, in Norfolk, to be re-brokered to the Wensum Trust.

Much of a section entitled “rationale for project” was originally blacked-out when the papers were first released last year, but Tes can now reveal it referred to an Ofsted visit in 2015, which was part of a programme of pilot inspections as it prepared to make changes to its inspection framework.

A newly uncensored part of the rationale for the take-over says: “As part of Ofsted’s proposed new 2016 inspection framework, the school was inspected in June 2015 and a private report was offered to the school. The provisional judgement was that the school requires special measures. This report is not on the Ofsted website and is not formally recognised as a judgement.”

Ofsted told Tes that such pilot reports were solely for its internal use, and schools that agreed to take part were not told the outcomes could be used by other bodies to hold them to account.

‘We need to be much clearer’

Gerard Batty, chief executive of the Wensum Trust, stressed that Acle Academy had chosen Wensum as its preferred sponsor, but added: “Whether or not the headteacher board did the right thing in using the pilot inspection, I don’t know.”

For Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, “it raises an interesting question about the approach of the HTB, how do they get their evidence, and how do they operate.

“If you are thinking about the shape of our education system we need to be much clearer about how these decisions are made, and what evidence they use to make these decisions, otherwise there is a view that there are going to be inconsistencies across the country.”

The DfE said: “Where information is withheld under the FOI Act an explanation of the exemption cited is provided. Following an appeal this case was reviewed and the sensitivity of the information in scope was reassessed.” 

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