Ofsted confirms all schools’ right to request return visits from inspectors

Every state-funded school in England can request an Ofsted inspection at any time, the inspectorate has confirmed to Education Uncovered.

This applies even to schools which are currently graded inadequate and thus in the throes of often unpopular forced academy takeovers.

This statement, though simply re-iterating a paragraph within recent versions of Ofsted’s inspection handbook, including the current one, is significant given current controversies where communities have been very keen for inspectors to re-visit their schools in cases of forced takeovers.

Education Uncovered was prompted to ask Ofsted by the case of Crigglestone Mackie Hill school in Wakefield, west Yorkshire. But the possibility of a request for a new inspection visit seems relevant to at least two other high-profile current controversies.

At Crigglestone Mackie Hill, the local MP, Mary Creagh, has reportedly written to Ofsted asking for a return inspection, after it failed a visit in December 2017.

That inspection, in turn, had prompted a chain of events which saw it first paired with an academy trust which had no experience of primary education – only for this trust to pull out over the summer in the face of community protests – and then a more local chain.

However, in the meantime, the school has been working in an improvement partnership with its local high school. In a short monitoring visit last December – the school’s last inspection of any kind – Ofsted highlighted progress. More than 1,500 people have now signed a petition calling for the partnership to be allowed to continue.

However, the school can only emerge from special measures – and with it gain the chance of having its academy order cancelled by the government – if inspectors return for a full inspection and give it a clean bill of health.

Under Ofsted’s usual rules setting out what happens after a school is graded “inadequate”, each institution is only guaranteed a full return inspection – known in Ofsted terminology as a “Section 5” inspection - within three years.

But in this case, this would appear to be too long for Mackie Hill, which was handed a new academy directive – naming a new trust called the “Inspire Partnership” as in line to take it over – within the first two weeks of the new term last month.

But Ofsted’s response to me confirms that any school could, if it wanted, seek to bypass this process by simply asking formally for the inspectorate to conduct a return visit. This would usually be at the school’s cost.

An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Yes, schools can still request an inspection. This is set out in paragraph 31 of our section 5 [inspection] handbook. (‘Schools are able, via the appropriate authority (normally the school’s governing body), to request an inspection.

“We treat these inspections as an inspection under section 5. If we carry one out, HMCI [Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector] may charge the appropriate authority for its cost.’”

There is no guarantee that such a request would be granted, with Ofsted appearing not to have any clear rules as to on what criteria any decision would be made.

On that, the spokesperson simply added: “Each request will be considered by the relevant regional director.”*

Should Ofsted not be making this clear, pro-actively, to schools?

It is not clear, in this case, whether the request from Creagh was formally for an inspection visit from Ofsted for which the school might pay.

However, it seems surprising – and, campaigners might feel disappointing, given what is at stake - that, when Ofsted’s regional director responded to Creagh after the latter had raised the issue of a re-inspection, the director did not set out the possibility of a formal inspection request from the school.

Emma Ing, Ofsted’s regional director for the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, wrote to Creagh on 18^th September. This came after the local Labour MP had told the Wakefield Express that she was “deeply disappointed that the government is pressing ahead with its plan to force Mackie Hill to become an academy against the wishes of parents, guardians and teachers,” and that she would be “pressing Ofsted to conduct an inspection as soon as possible”.

In her response to the article, in a letter seen by Education Uncovered, Ing wrote to Creagh to state what the timeframe was for routine re-inspections of schools which had been graded inadequate.

She simply reminded Creagh that a school found to be inadequate “will usually receive another full inspection within 36 months”.

But nowhere in the letter was there any mention of all schools having the right to request an inspection at any time.

I asked Ofsted why this was not set out in the letter to Creagh. Surely Ofsted should be reminding schools – and those connected to them – of this right?

There was no response on this from Ofsted.

Other cases

There are two other current cases where this could be a live issue.

First, as I reported yesterday, the community around Sexey’s School in Bruton in Somerset, is up in arms about a proposal set to be imposed by the new regional schools commissioner there, Hannah Woodhouse, which would see it transferred to another academy trust.

The school, which offers state boarding provision, was graded inadequate in March but an inspection of its boarding element in June found evidence of progress.

In a letter to Gavin Williamson, education secretary, said to be written on behalf of 91 parents who attended a meeting on the school’s future last week, parent Susan Simpson wrote: “We have been eagerly awaiting a return visit from Ofsted to validate what we all see and feel,” in terms of “huge improvements” at the school since March. Yet, again the school faced waiting up to three years for that full return visit, her letter stressed.

The point seemed to be backed up in the open letter which the school’s chair of governors, Janet Wilson, wrote to Williamson and others about the regional schools commissioner’s plan, in which she pointed out that, other than the inspection of its boarding provision, the school had not yet even had a monitoring visit from Ofsted to validate progress.

Finally, at Waltham Holy Cross primary school in Essex, where a hugely contentious forced academisation under NET Academies Trust has been in the offing for the past 18 months, there has also been a feeling that the school might benefit from a return inspection, especially given its improved test results.

Brief analysis

The confirmation from Ofsted seems to underline that all schools facing takeovers but feeling that they are making progress under current management teams have it in their power to ask for return visits by inspectors in the hope that this will be validated.

Whether such requests will be granted, and what the outcome of such return visits might be, are other questions. But it does seem that campaigners should at least be reminded of this potential route.

Many will also feel that Ofsted itself should be reminding communities, facing moves likely to lead to upheaval for pupils which they feel is not necessary, that they are within their rights to request a return from inspectors, especially if the inspectorate has been written to informally requesting a visit.

After all, this could offer an external perspective validating, or not, the community’s view.

*Back in October 2016, I asked Ofsted, under Freedom of Information, how many schools had formally requested inspection visits in each of the previous three years, and how many had been visited as a request.

Ofsted passed back statistics showing that the number of schools actually visited following such requests was tiny: four each in 2013-14 and 2014-15 and none the following year.

It told me it would take it too long to find out how many schools had requested such visits in these years. So we do not know what proportion of requests got accepted.

Ofsted did give me the names of the eight schools which had been inspected in this way, however. Cross-checking their names and dates of inspection with Ofsted’s database, I found that seven of these inspections resulted in “outstanding” verdicts, with the remaining school rated “good”.