The Annual Ofsted Report: An overview for maintained schools and academies

Ofsteds Annual Report was released on Tuesday 4 December 2018 by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman.

The main points of this are summarised below:

1. The number of Academies has increased from 32% last year, to 36% this year.
2. State funded schools: There were 2,470 full inspections this year. The overall mix of grades this year is as follows:
   1. Outstanding: 6%
   2. Good: 76%
   3. Requiring improvement: 15%
   4. Inadequate: 4%
3. Complaints made to Ofsted about schools: There were 11,700 complaints about schools made to Ofsted in the past year. 1,930 of these constituted ‘qualifying complaints’. Of these qualifying complaints, a majority related the leadership and management of a school or to pupils’ well-being.
4. Stuck Schools: There are approximately 490 ‘stuck’ schools that have been stuck in a cycle of weak inspection outcomes since 2005. These are more likely to have become academies and to be in multi-academy trusts to reflect the government’s policy. Ofsted is to start an evaluation project next year to understand why some interventions to help schools improve, including inspection, are consistently ineffective for some schools.
5. Academies and multi-academy trusts: The academy sector continues to grow and evolve and there were 7,900 academies in August 2018 compared to 6,900 12 months before. Since April 2016, the DfE has issued nearly 500 directive academy orders to Local Authority schools that Ofsted judged to be inadequate.

Of all the academies that have moved trusts since 2011, around 200 have been inspected both before and since the transfer. Fifty-two per cent of the 150 schools that were less than good before the transfer improved to good or outstanding at their most recent inspection.

6. Off-rolling: This is an issue. This is done to those who may be seen as difficult to teach or likely to adversely affect the school’s performance data. Read more about off-rolling here. 
7. Provision for children with SEND: The level of demand for Local Authorities to undertake EHC needs assessments has increased by over 50% since 2015. The number of requests for EHC plans that are either refused or delayed is also increasing.

Pupils with SEND in mainstream secondary schools can struggle to access good quality education. The Report refers to statistics such as that pupils with SEN support are five times more likely to have a permanent exclusion than pupils with no SEND. Additionally, 27% of pupils with SEN support had a fixed-term exclusion last year (equating to 93,800).

Nearly 5,800 pupils with SEND left their school between Years 10 and 11 and some of them may have been ‘off-rolled’; pupils with SEND account for 13% of all pupils but 30% of those who leave their school. Over half of these pupils do not reappear in another state funded school.

8. Pupil referral units and alternative provision: 82% of all state-funded PRUs and alternative provision academies and free schools were judged to be good or outstanding at their most recent inspection. This is compared to 84% the previous year.

Since 2016, there have been 160 suspected cases of unregistered alterative providers.