Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 7 April 2014, Official Report, column 81W, on academies, for what reason bodies which run academy chains are not inspected by Ofsted separately from the individual schools run by the academy chains.

Ofsted already inspects academy chains through batched inspections of schools within chains. It has recently undertaken focused inspections of academies within E-ACT multi-academy trust, and has previously inspected a group of academies within the AET chain. This has shown to be an effective approach and there are no plans to widen Ofsted's legal powers to include the inspection of head offices.