Exclusive: Multi-academy trust’s alternative provision service “operating unregistered for years”

A taxpayer-funded alternative provision service for five- to 16-year-old pupils, run by a multi-academy trust and paid for through an �877,000-a-year contract with a local authority, has been operating “illegally” for years because it is not registered with the Department for Education.

This is our understanding of the situation at Wellsway multi-academy trust’s (WMAT) alternative provision(AP), which operates in and around Bath and Bristol and which opened back in 2014 but has never been subject to inspection.

Sources close to the provision say that conditions are “shocking and appalling” - though the trust says that the facilities have been inspected and monitored by the local authority and have been "upgraded where possible" - and that Ofsted, which has been speaking out about unregistered schools in the non-state-funded sector and the need for schools to check whether provision is registered before using it, is aware of the position yet has failed to ensure that the service is inspected.

The AP’s unregistered status, which the local authority said it had informed Ofsted about, has made this possible, sources have said.

Pressed on the provision’s legal situation this week, Ofsted said that it had not received any complaints about the service’s quality and that its registration status was a matter for the Department for Education.