Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department are taking to inspect multi academy trusts.

Academy trusts are held to high standards of governance and transparency, as companies, charities, and public sector bodies.

Ofsted inspection takes place at the level of each individual school within a trust, which provides accountability and transparency for parents around the education their child receives. At the trust level, the department has a broader framework of accountability, which both looks at the performance of their schools, and focuses on high standards of governance and financial management, while also recognising that trusts operate on very different models and in different contexts.

In July, the department published a new framework for commissioning multi-academy trusts. The framework provides descriptions of what the department expects of high-quality trusts and sets out the evidence Regional Directors will use when making decisions to place a school with a trust. It represents an ambitious vision for the academies sector, and a driver of high standards.

The department’s regional directors and their teams, together with the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), provide robust educational and financial oversight of all academy trusts.

Where non-financial or financial non-compliance or governance failure is identified, Regions Group or the ESFA respectively will intervene, in a way that is proportionate to the risk and preserves education provision. This can include issuing a trust with a notice to improve or, in the most serious cases, termination of the funding agreement.