Ofsted

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The improvement in our schools under the last Conservative Government reflected a combination of high autonomy—we trusted our school and trust leaders to know the answers for their school and their community—and high accountability, so that the interests of children are protected and clear action is taken if a school is underperforming. That action is led by our best school trusts, and that is why our international rankings in England in reading, maths and science have all risen, while in Labour-run Wales they have sunk. It feels like these principles, which have driven success and opportunity for our children, are being eroded, and the changes being proposed to Ofsted inspections require further explanation.

I acknowledge that the Government say standards will rise as a result of the changes they are proposing, but school leaders and parents need to know how. Can the Minister explain what will actually be new on the new school report cards? There is an enormous amount of information and publicly available data on schools, and there is obviously a great deal of detail in the existing Ofsted reports. What is the gap that the Government have identified and what is the problem they are trying to solve? What evidence does the Minister have that the regional improvement teams proposed by the Government will be more effective than strong academy trusts in turning around underperforming schools? Finally, how will decisions on interventions in underperforming schools be taken between now and September 2025?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

In response to the noble Baroness’s first remarks, I agree that teachers and school leaders deserve enormous congratulation on the improvements that they have made in schools, and this Government are committed to supporting them to achieve even higher standards for all our pupils.

The announcement that the Government have made alongside Ofsted is the removal of the single headline grade for Ofsted inspections, something that provided a relatively low level of information but of course had enormously high stakes for schools. In doing that, we are absolutely committed to ensuring that parents have the information they need to be able to make decisions for their children, and that schools have the information to enable them to improve. That is why we will work with schools, parents and young people themselves, and Ofsted will lead this to help to develop the report cards that will provide more useful information.

The noble Baroness was, understandably, particularly interested in the impact on intervention. To be absolutely clear, where Ofsted identifies serious concerns with a school, the current situation whereby the Secretary of State can ensure that a maintained school becomes an academy or a failing academy is forced to become part of an academy trust remains. There is no change there but where schools could benefit from improvement, the development of regional improvement teams, apart from an early structural intervention in the management of schools, gives us an additional way to promote improvement in our schools and make sure that all children, wherever they are learning, are gaining the highest standards and schools are being held to account for delivering those.