Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the recommendations of the Ofsted report, Multi-academy trusts: benefits, challenges and functions, published on 15 July, and in particular the recommendation that Ofsted be empowered to inspect both multi-academy trusts and individual schools in order to strengthen their accountability.

The department requires a high level of accountability and transparency of trusts and has robust processes in place for monitoring their performance. This includes collecting and publishing a wide range of information, such as tables setting out measures of educational performance; financial benchmarking tables; and letters to academy trusts about poor or inadequate performance or weaknesses in safeguarding, governance and/or financial management. This goes beyond the information that the department publishes about local authorities.

Ofsted plays a vital role in holding trusts to account by providing independent judgements on the educational performance of schools within a trust and through its process of summary evaluations. Ofsted has so far published 6 summary evaluations of academy trusts since their introduction in December 2018.

The department will continue to make information about trusts more visible. As we do this, we will ensure that accountability is robust, transparent and proportionate for all schools.