Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, on how many occasions regional schools commissioners have made interventions in each year since their inception in 2014.

Regional Schools Commissioners (RSC) take key operational decisions delegated to them by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, and will intervene in schools in the following circumstances:

• Maintained schools that have been judged inadequate by Ofsted are required to become sponsored academies to receive additional support to secure rapid and sustainable improvement from a strong sponsor. In these circumstances the RSC issues the academy order, matches the school with a suitable sponsor, and agrees at which point the funding agreement can be signed.
• To commission high quality support for under-performing academies and free schools to improve them quickly.

The below table sets out how many sponsored academies have been opened because of an academy order being issued to a local authority-maintained school having been judged inadequate. It also shows how many academies and free schools have been judged inadequate between academic years 2014/15 and 2021/22 and therefore the number of academies and free schools that have been eligible for intervention over this period. The department’s policy on intervening in inadequate academies is set out in the published schools causing concern guidance.

Source: Get Information About Schools, and Ofsted Official Statistics 2014/15 to 2021/22