Ofsted: Academy Chains

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to give Ofsted the powers to inspect the management of academy chains.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, when inspecting an academy in a chain, inspectors can and should consider the effectiveness of the governance arrangements and the school improvement support provided by the chain. Ofsted also carries out inspections of groups of academies within chains. These are an effective means of considering the management of academy chains and ensuring academy chains are held properly to account. The Secretary of State has written to HMCI recently, setting out our views out on this, and the letter is available on our website.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply, and I am very pleased that the Secretary of State has belatedly been forced to make some concessions on this matter. However, can the Minister explain why we continue to have one set of rules for the people who run academy chains and another set of rules for local authorities? The latter are assessed on their strategic leadership of their schools, which of course is essential to the schools’ performance and improvement. So why do we not assess academy chain managers on the same basis as local authorities?

[Lord Nash]

There have not been any concessions. It is completely unnecessary for Ofsted to inspect chains’ head offices. Its batched inspection methodology, which it has used in a number of cases, is working extremely well. Ofsted has a great deal to do. As of September this year, it is taking in-house all its subcontracted inspectors, who do the vast majority of its inspections, and it is unnecessary to ask it to do a further task that is not needed.