Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent progress her Department has made on ensuring that (a) schools rated as inadequate by Ofsted become an academy and (b) schools rated as requiring improvement.

Regional Directors (RDs) take key operational decisions delegated to them by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education.

Maintained schools that have been judged inadequate by Ofsted are required to become sponsored academies in order to secure rapid and sustainable improvement. In these circumstances, the RD matches the school with a suitable sponsor, issues an Academy Order and agrees at which point the funding agreement can be signed.

The below table sets out how many sponsored academies have been opened as a result of an Academy Order being issued to a Local Authority maintained school having been judged inadequate.

On 1 September 2022, the Department introduced a new intervention measure for schools that are judged Requires Improvement by Ofsted, and were also judged below Good in their previous full inspection. The Department announced that they would write to all governing bodies and trusts where schools meet the legal scope for intervention, except those where general exemptions apply.

The Department confirmed that most of the initial activity will be prioritised within the 55 education investment areas. In all cases, the Department will be inviting representations from trusts or other appropriate bodies before making an assessment on whether the school has the necessary capacity to achieve rapid and sustained improvement and whether intervention is required. The Department has now begun to communicate decisions to schools, following consideration of the representations made.

In addition, in September 2022, the Department launched a new iteration of the Trust and School Improvement (TSI) offer, offering up to 10 days of improvement support and advice from a system leader to schools (including single academy trusts and multi-academy trusts with only one school) that receive an Ofsted Requires Improvement judgement during the 2022/23 academic year and to Trusts that contain at least two schools for three years and meet at least one of the below criteria:

• At least 50% of schools in receipt of an Ofsted Requires Improvement or Inadequate judgement (only includes schools that have been inspected since joining the trust)
• Overseen more declines in Ofsted judgements than improvements, in schools’ most recent inspections since they joined the trust.