Inspection of traditionalist academy appears not to have analysed its controversial textbooks, or mentioned that children sometimes struggled to “make sense” of factual teaching

The inspection of a primary school, run by a high-profile traditionalist academy trust, took place with no apparent consideration of the textbooks around which its curriculum has revolved.

Comments within the inspection notes, released to Education Uncovered under Freedom of Information, also included that the curriculum was less than “fulsome” in some areas, and that, in geography, children sometimes struggled to “make sense” of facts they had been taught – though neither of these observations made it into the published report.

The notes also saw children at the school stating that they did not think the practice of “reflection” – when pupils lose their break for a discussion with their teacher about misbehaviour – worked.

This detail, in relation to the inspection last June of Churchill Gardens, a primary controlled by Future Academies Trust in Westminster, central London, will raise further questions about the effectiveness of Ofsted reports as a mechanism for documenting the truth about schools’ work.

They may also raise questions about Ofsted’s choice of inspectors, with this one led by a former secondary academy headteacher, who appears once to have been a colleague head of Future’s current chief executive.

The background