Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how frequently academy trusts will be inspected; and whether inspection frequency will vary according to previous performance.

The government has tabled an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill to bring in multi-academy trust inspections. Multi-academy trust inspections will raise standards and enable sharing of best trust-level practice, as well as incentivising and supporting improvement efforts across the sector.

The government intends to specify the intervals for routine trust inspections in secondary legislation, after working closely with Ofsted and the sector to determine what an appropriate period of time would be.