Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answers of 29 April 2014, Official Report, columns 559-60W and column 560W, on schools: inspections, for what reason local authorities are inspected separately from schools maintained by local authorities but academies are not inspected separately from the head offices of academy chains.

Ofsted can inspect local authorities to see whether they are fulfilling a number of statutory duties. Academy head offices do not have the same statutory duties. However, Ofsted already inspects academy chains through batched inspections. 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.