By Andrew Pring | 1 September 2014
The academy chain where David Hoare, the new head of Ofsted, has been a trustee since January has been adjudged to not be performing well enough by inspectors at the watchdog.
The Academies Enterprise Trust, the UK’s largest school chain with 77 academies, was criticised last year by Ofsted for its poor standards. Hoare, an experienced businessman, was drafted in as a trustee to help improve performance.
However, re-inspection by Ofsted in June has found many areas of ongoing concern.
Of the 12 academies inspected as part of the focused inspection activity in June 2014,
one was judged to be inadequate and five to ‘require improvement’. The remaining six were judged to be good, with none rated as outstanding.
According to the update published today, only five of the 12 academies inspected had improved since their previous inspection. One had declined since its previous inspection.
In his letter to the trust, Ofsted chief operating officer Matthew Coffey said: ‘Half the academies in the Trust are not yet good. As a result, too many pupils in the trust are not receiving a good enough education.’
Responding to the letter, an AET spokeswoman said: ‘We recognise the important role Ofsted plays in monitoring standards and we share its commitment to the highest levels of academic performance.
‘However, the targeted inspection of 12 academies does not give the true picture of progress across our 77 academies. Since September 2013, 16 schools have been judged “good” and a further 3 “outstanding”. We have raised a number of issues with Ofsted about their interpretation of the data and potential errors of fact. In particular, we are concerned that the letter intended to summarise the 12 targeted inspections places an unfairly negative slant on the more balanced assessments in the reports themselves.’
Many of the academies inspected by Ofsted have a history of underperformance and have been with AET only for a short time, the spokeswoman added.
‘Turning a school around takes time, but we are acting to ensure a rapid and sustained improvement in these academies.’
