Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, under the proposed definition of a coasting school in the Education and Adoption Bill, an academy cannot be found to be coasting until the fourth year after it has been established despite three years of performance data being available.

An academy will be subject to the same coasting definition as a maintained school. Our proposed definition would identify a school as coasting where data shows that it is failing to fulfil its pupils’ potential over a three year period. As long as the academy has three years of validated results, which may date from before the school converted to an academy, it may be notified it is coasting before the fourth year of its operation as an academy.