Academy Trust Inspections: The Proposals

The reason for this proposal is that currently the government has limited ability to intervene at trust level where there are failings. At the moment Ofsted carries out summary evaluations of multi academy trusts. However, these summary evaluations are not inspections and are carried out with the agreement of the trust being reviewed. They also do not result in graded judgements.

Given that decisions made at trust level can have a ripple effect into the performance of individual schools, the government’s view is that bringing trust-level inspection more firmly into the inspection framework, along with the proposed powers to intervene, would help to address concerns across a trust and provide a necessary tool to gather insight into the trust itself.

Rationale behind trust-level inspection

The current inspection regime focuses and produces inspection reports on the quality of education in individual schools. However, the responsibilities of academy trusts to their schools include ensuring a high-quality education is provided and identifying areas for improvement and acting on them, as well as ensuring that the trust is cooperating effectively with local partners in the best interests of all children in the area.

The government’s view is that, even though some decisions may be delegated to the individual schools, the trust-level decision making by members, trustees and the senior executive team, should be eligible for independent inspection.

Ensuring effective implementation

Whilst there are benefits to inspections at trust level, for example trust leaders may be better equipped to understand areas of strength and areas for improvement, there will need to be careful consideration to ensure that trust-level inspections are implemented effectively and meaningfully. The Confederation of Schools Trusts has provided its own thoughts on this point.

As a starting point, it will be essential for clarity in respect of what will be meaningfully inspected at trust level, instead of or in addition to at school level. Many trust leaders take conscious steps to ensure that their trust and their schools are seen to work as one entity for the benefit of their pupils, so it will be key to ensure that trusts and their schools are seen and considered as one entity, rather than becoming separate and disjointed during the inspection process.

It is also important to note that, as yet, there is no confirmation as to whether the trust-level inspection will result in a report-card style output. As well as ensuring school improvement, Ofsted reports are crucial for parents seeking to choose their child’s school. Cohesion between the outputs at trust level and school level will be key t ensuring that parents can make informed decisions with clear information.

Similarly, we envisage that it will be helpful to inspect the trust as a whole, including its individual schools, as part of one inspection cycle except where it is necessary to move away from an inspection cycle where particular school within the trust requires additional attention. This would again mean that the trust is viewed as one body and the inspection process would be more cohesive. However, the position in this respect is not yet clear so trusts will need to await confirmation on the practicalities.

The Confederation of Schools trust has also highlighted that thought will need to be given as to what is necessary to be inspected at trust-level to avoid what is has called the “kitchen-sink tendency”. The areas inspected at individual school level are safeguarding, inclusion, curriculum and teaching, achievement, attendance and behaviour, personal development and well-being, and leadership and governance. Simply duplicating the assessment of these areas at both school and trust-level will likely be an inefficient use of time and resource. Instead, we anticipate that care will need to be taken to consider where the line is drawn between the trust-level responsibilities and expectations, and those at school-level.

Proactive steps for academy trusts

Whilst we await further confirmation in respect of the practicalities of trust-level inspections, it is an opportune moment for trusts to pause and reflect on their internal governance and management, and consider taking proactive steps to implement improvement where necessary.

We offer external governance reviews of academy trusts to assess and evaluate current governance efficiency and effectiveness, and recommend areas for improvement, as well as areas of strength to be build upon. If you would like details of this, or our other services such as our policy review package, please get in touch.