High-profile academy saw year seven to nine pupil numbers drop by 15 per cent after chain’s takeover –but no comment from inspectors in Ofsted report

Pupil year groups in an academy shrank by nearly 10 per cent in a single year after it was taken over by a major chain –but the dramatic change went uncommented-on by Ofsted inspectors.

The Harris Federation, England’s second-largest academy trust, is celebrating after one of its more recently-taken-over schools, Harris Academy St John’s Wood in Westminster, central London, registered a “good” rating from the inspectorate.

This was a big improvement on the “inadequate” judgment handed to its predecessor school.

But, Education Uncovered can reveal, specific year groups within the school reduced by a total of 81 pupils between the last year of the predecessor school and the first year after Harris arrived.

This was nearly 10 per cent. And pupil numbers within individual cohorts continued to drop in the following year, meaning that there was a 15 per cent fall in the size of the three pre-GCSE year groups which remained in the school throughout the years 2017 to 2019.