Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to strengthen the regulatory framework for multi-academy trusts.

The Department provides multi-academy trusts with a high level of autonomy to drive improvement in the school sector. This approach ensures trust leaders are accountable to their trustees.

Inspection of individual schools and financial oversight from the Education and Skills Funding Agency are the two primary levers in the Department’s regulation of trusts. We publish performance information on multi-academy trusts and have powers to intervene in the event of failures of governance.

In March, the Department published the Academies Regulatory and Commissioning Review. This sets out how we will revise and consolidate our regulatory approach, so it is more proportionate, effective and risk-based, delivering regulatory oversight in a more strategic manner. It also details how the Department will support the continued transition to a self-improving system by sharing best practice and supporting trust improvement.

Finally, the Review sets out how we will reform our approach to commissioning multi-academy trusts to grow. It was followed in July by the publication of the ‘Commissioning high-quality trusts’ guidance. Together, these documents set out new, high expectations on trusts that want to grow which we will apply consistently and transparently. The result will be that standards in the trust sector will continue to rise.

Multi-academy trusts continue to improve standards in schools with poor Ofsted ratings, with 88% of schools now rated good or outstanding compared to 68% in 2010. This reflects the ability of high quality trusts to introduce effective approaches to raising standards, and to deploy the capacity and capability of the trust to target underperformance.