Revealed: string of free schools failing Ofsted inspections

Five free schools failed Ofsted inspections in the last six weeks of last term, as national inspection statistics, supposedly showing the success of the model, in reality prove much more debatable.

Last month’s GCSE exams success of possibly now the most famous free school, Michaela in Wembley, north London, came after renewed calls (such as here and here) for Boris Johnson’s new government to open more of the new institutions, funded directly by Whitehall.

This week the Department for Education also published a press release highlighting the fact that 84 per cent of free schools are currently rated good or outstanding, though without any mention as to what the rate is among other state-funded schools.

But Education Uncovered’s scrutiny of Ofsted’s inspection verdicts database invites serious questions.

In particular, this analysis continues to support a view that the inspection record of free schools remains uneven, with greater proportions of free schools than the national average rated as Ofsted-outstanding but with a higher-than-average record of failure, too.

Recent Ofsted failures

Five of the last 24 free schools to have Ofsted reports published, all at the end of the just-passed academic year in June and July, failed these inspections, analysis of the latest version of the inspectorate’s database reveals. That is a failure rate of 21 per cent, which is nearly six times the national average for all state-funded schools (see below).

The last free school to have its inspection report published in July, according to Ofsted’s inspection database, was the London Enterprise Academy, in Whitechapel, east London.

The 482-pupil secondary, which opened in 2014 and is run by an academy trust called Tower Hamlets Enterprise Academy Ltd, was rated inadequate and placed in special measures.

In what seems a damning report, published on July 31^st, the inspection team led by Janet Hallett HMI concluded that “the school is not providing an acceptable standard of education for pupils”.

“Leaders have not created a culture where pupils have a sense of belonging to the school community,” the report stated.

It added, shockingly, that “almost all pupils who spoke to inspectors did not like the school and would not recommend it to others”.

Although “the leadership of teaching and learning has some strong features and is starting to have a positive impact,” the report was also highly critical on behaviour, stating that “boys show off, playfight and dominate the social spaces around the school at breaktime and lunchtime” and that “pupils’ behaviour in classes disrupts their learning and the learning of other pupils”.

The school was also said to be unable to account for all its pupils who were at off-site provision. Inspectors recommended that it did not recruit newly qualified teachers.

Ashid Ali, the school’s principal, told this website that the Ofsted report was wrong, and that four experienced educationists who had worked with the school – Anne Pepper, a former Ofsted inspector; Martin Tissot, an executive headteacher and National Leader of Education; Simon Elliott, chief executive of the Community Schools Trust; and Martin Brown, a headteacher and National Leader of Education – also disagreed with its findings.

Ali said: “We challenged Ofsted in their findings and we have reasons to believe that the report doesn’t reflect our school”.

He said Brown had interviewed a group of students in July, after the Ofsted visit, and “confirmed that pupils enjoyed coming to the school”.

Ali also pointed two more positive monitoring inspections, in 2017 and 2018 after the school had received a “requires improvement” judgement in its first full inspection in April 2017. And he highlighted the school’s summer 2019 GCSE results, which were better than national average figures.

A former private school in Bradford, west Yorkshire, which stopped charging fees as it became a free school in 2013, was graded inadequate following an Ofsted report published on June 18^th.

Bradford Girls’ Grammar School, which educates more than 1,000 girls aged four to 19, was adjudged to have serious weaknesses after its effectiveness of leadership and management; its early years provision; and its 16 to 19 study programmes were rated inadequate.

The inspection report suggests the stated weaknesses in this case were quite specific, with only three bullet points offered under the summary finding that “this is an inadequate school”, the first one being that “there are significant weaknesses in leaders’ handling of allegations about staff”, and that “safeguarding is not effective”.

Inspectors also found that “some pupils do not feel they have an adult in school whom they could approach if worried about anything”. They did, though rate the school good for teaching quality and results. The local paper reported that the school has “challenged” the report’s findings, saying that pupil safety is of “paramount importance”.   

As Schools Week reported before the summer break, an “alternative provision” academy chain which featured in a BBC Panorama documentary in March saw one of its institutions failed in an inspection report published on July 1st.   

TBAP Aspire Academy, an alternative provision free school in Harlow, Essex, was put in special measures after inspectors reported many failings: their report’s summary setting out why they rated it inadequate runs to 13 bullet points.

Leaders “are unaware of where all pupils are,” found the report, also highlighting “poor relations between staff and the trust,” child protection records being “poorly maintained” and that “not enough staff are suitably trained to manage poor behaviour”.

TBAP told Schools Week it was putting in place measures to turn the situation around.

Meanwhile, a free school which featured on this website back in November 2017, as the trust running it had spent more than a tenth of its income on related party contracts, was rated inadequate following an Ofsted report published on July 17^th.

Rugby Free Secondary School, which opened in 2016, told the Rugby Advertiser of its “huge disappointment” after being rated as having serious weaknesses.

The school has only 529 pupils, Ofsted states, which is well short of its capacity of 1,470. The inspection report found that “senior leaders have an overgenerous view of their school’s effectiveness” and that “leaders’ weak communication has resulted in a breakdown of relationships between the body of staff. Consequently, morale at the school is extremely low”.

The “Learning Today Leading Tomorrow” trust running both this school and Rugby Free Primary School – rated “good” by Ofsted last year – told the local paper that its chief executive, Brenda Mullen, had taken direct charge of the school following the inspection.

Finally, another free which opened in September, Daventry Hill, a special school in the Northamptonshire town of Daventry, was rated inadequate and adjudged to have serious weaknesses in a report published on July 24^th.

The school, which caters for “pupils with cognition and learning needs, profound and multiple learning needs, severe learning needs and pupils with autism spectrum disorders,” was found to have “poor teaching” by the inspection team.

The report listed 10 bullet points of reasons why Daventry Hill, part of the “Creating Tomorrow” trust,  was an “inadequate school”, with only three strengths listed in the summary, although the report did say that a new leadership team “has made a positive difference”.

I have asked the school to respond.

Recent inspection judgements show polarised statistics on free schools

Overall, since and including the publication of the Bradford Girls’ Grammar School report on June 18^th, there have been 24 inspection judgements released on free schools, according to Ofsted’s latest database.

The statistics suggest that the verdicts are polarised, with a much higher number of outstanding ratings than the national average, but also, as stated above, a much higher rate of failures, too.

So this period saw eight frees rated Ofsted-outstanding: Westclyst Community Primary, Exeter; Pinner High School, near Harrow, north London; Atam Academy and Concordia Academy, both in Romford in Essex; Olive School, Preston; The Olive School, Birmingham; and Yavneh Primary School, in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire.

That translates to a rate of 33 per cent. In addition, there were 11 free schools rated “good” over this period, or 46 per cent of the total.

Taken together, however, the proportion of frees during this period rated good or outstanding was below the national average.

Over this period, no frees were rated “requires improvement”. But, at 21 per cent, the proportion rated inadequate was nearly six times the national average for all state-funded schools.

The bigger picture

Of course, the above is a very small sample size, taken over just a snapshot of a few weeks of inspections, over a period in which I had noticed that the rate of inadequate verdicts for free schools had spiked.

So, pulling back, how do all the free school inspection judgements that there have been so far – at least among those free schools which remain open – compare to those for state-funded schools as a whole?

To make this comparison, I used Ofsted’s database of the last full inspection results for all current state-funded schools in England.

I compared the latest current inspection judgement of each free school*, where it has been inspected, with that of state-funded schools as a whole.

This seems important, as the DfE had flagged up that 84 per cent good or outstanding rate among free schools which had been inspected in its press release, published on Sunday, setting out various measures it said would “continue to boost standards in schools”.

That publication offered no sense of how free school inspection success rates compare to the rest of the state-funded sector. So I looked at the data.

I found that, as a whole, those free schools which currently exist, and which have been inspected, have a substantially higher rate of Ofsted-outstanding ratings than exist among state-funded schools as a whole.

So some 29 per cent of current free schools which have been inspected are Ofsted-outstanding, compared to 20 per cent among state-funded schools as a whole.

There is a caveat: Ofsted’s statistics are based only on schools which have not closed. So, for example, free schools which were shut down following serious failings – such as this one – do not count in the statistics.

And, while it is true that other types of schools close, too, the closure rate among free schools does seem high: 23 mainstream free schools (not counting University Technical Colleges or studio schools) have closed according to government records.

This is nearly five per cent of the 470 institutions which have opened since 2011, which again seems a high rate given that this policy has not been operating long: all of the closed schools did so within six years of opening.

Despite the dropping-out of closed free schools from the national statistics, Ofsted’s data show they are being rated as either good or outstanding at a slightly lower rate – 84 per cent – than among all state-funded schools nationally (86 per cent).

The proportion of frees currently rated “requires improvement”, at 16 per cent, is slightly higher than the national average of 14 per cent.

And overall some 5.1 per cent of frees have a current “inadequate” verdict on their records, compared to a figure of only 3.6 per cent among state-funded schools as a whole.

As argued above, none of these statistics, including the proportion of frees rated “inadequate”, include closed institutions, a proportion of which did so having had failing Ofsted judgements.

It also seems worth saying that more than a quarter – 26 per cent – do not yet have any Ofsted rating, as, having opened only in the last three years, they have yet to be inspected.

Further analysis of Ofsted records shows that some two per cent of all existing free schools – nine of them – were graded inadequate during the last academic year. The comparable figure for local authority community schools was only 0.8 per cent.

So does the inspection record of free schools really support the rapid expansion of the policy which has been called for in recent weeks, and which this month’s Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is said to be open to?

Perhaps ministers would be better advised, if they value Ofsted verdicts, to concentrate on doing what they can to ensure that the inspection record of free schools, which is admittedly good in places, is less patchy.

 

*In looking at the overall inspection verdicts of free schools from Ofsted’s database, I excluded University Technical Colleges and studio schools. Technically, in the government’s records, these are types of free schools. Including their Ofsted rating in the free schools data would bring down the statistics for the policy as a whole, given the patchy inspection records of these types of free school. The government appears not to have included UTCs and studios in the free schools statistic used in its press release this week, so I wanted to test out the record on this basis.