Revealed: How academy trusts parachute central teams into Ofsted inspections

Trust bosses have defended parachuting in central team staff to their schools during Ofsted inspections after the union representing inspectors raised “significant concerns”.

Last month Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief, claimed some trust leaders were “putting pressure” on inspectors and making inspections “more adversarial”.

Two trusts sent in seven extra staff, Schools Week has found. Another flooded one of its schools with 25.

Inspectors say the practice is impacting their ability to evaluate “normal practice” at schools. One critic likened it to gaming.

But trusts say separating central leaders and schools “completely misunderstands” the point of MATs, stressing they are the same organisation. Extra support helps limit disruption and supports school staff, they say.

Schools Week investigates…

What are the different approaches?

Ofsted said it expects to “see a school as it operates on any other day”, with inspectors expected to meet staff directly responsible for management and governance.

“As a minimum” this would include a trust’s chief executive. But inspectors “will recognise” that this could be more than one person if responsibilities were delegated.

The lead inspector would consult the school and trust to “determine” who they needed to meet.

We sent freedom of information requests to the 20 largest trusts asking how many from their central team or elsewhere were present at their inspections last year.

Nine answered our query, another 10 said they didn’t hold the data. Nicholas Postgate Catholic Education Trust did not respond. 

United Learning, England’s largest trust, has a policy that the regional director responsible for the school, who is the head’s line manager, should be on site during an inspection.

 They represent the governance and leadership of the trust and provide support to heads, it said. Of its 16 inspections last year, two regional directors attended for five of them.

The Astrea Academies Trust, meanwhile, drafted 25 members of staff “whose routine place of work” was elsewhere into a February inspection at Longsands Academy in Cambridgeshire.

This included eight senior leaders from sister schools and four trust leaders. 

But the trust said the inspection took place when there was “a live ballot for strike action” so some staff were providing cover.

Limit inspection disruption

 Astrea said calling on support to “help prepare and to cover certain duties to limit the disruption the inspection causes to students’ experience” was a benefit of being in a trust.

Ormiston Academies Trust, which has 44 academies, had nine inspections last year. One had seven additional staff attend, another two inspections had five. Four had no extra staff. 

For an April inspection of Sandymoor Ormiston Academy in Runcorn, the trust deployed five lead practitioners to support heads of department and provide capacity. 

Ormiston’s national director of secondary education also met inspectors, along with its head of data and analysis. 

Ofsted rated the school ‘good’, up from a ‘requires improvement’ judgment made before the trust took Sandymoor on.

GLF Schools sent at least four school improvement officers into each inspection last year.

Seven attended the October inspection of Southgate Primary School in West Sussex, which was upgraded from ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’.

Staff met the lead inspector and supported the head. They also supported a “new trust-wide curriculum”, helped the school reading leader prepare and accompanied inspectors on learning walks, the trust said.

But Jeffrey Quaye, a former Ofsted lead inspector and national director of education and standards at Aspirations Academies Trust, said inspectors would want to check if it was “usual practice” for a school to have “unusually large numbers of trust leadership teams in a school” during an inspection.

“If that is contrary to what they do routinely, then that’s a question about ‘are they not confident about the leadership of the school?’”

Julian Drinkall, the chief executive of GLF, said its academies received educational support throughout the year. This ranged from “universal” support to “bespoke”, based on which “priority groups” the school fell in to.

‘Akin to gaming’

Adrian Gray, an education consultant and former Ofsted inspector, said flooding a school with central team members for an inspection was akin to “gaming”.

“You should not be able to manipulate the inspection by bringing in extra staff. It’s making the school not as it normally would be, and deliberately, just for the inspection.”

Ofsted said a school’s leadership and management grade could be impacted if inspectors felt they were in any way being “intentionally prevented from seeing a school operate as normal”.

‘You should not be able to manipulate an inspection’

When asked if this had happened before, the watchdog said it did not think it was a “significant issue”.

Quaye added schools should provide the lead inspector with a list of any members of staff who did not routinely work at the school.

Tomas Thurogood-Hyde, Astrea’s director of corporate services, added: “We are always fully open with Ofsted about who is on site and why, and there have never been any issues or concerns raised.”

Support for heads ‘good practice’

United Learning also said sending regional directors in to support heads during inspections was “good practice”, following a coroner’s finding that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of Caversham Primary head Ruth Perry.

Ormiston said it took responsibility for staff wellbeing “seriously” and, if requested by heads, sometimes provided “additional support for leaders as well as doing things like help with classroom cover, lunchtime duties or wider pastoral support”.

The Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust has its academies group executive principal (AGEP), chief executive, deputy, and head of safeguarding in inspections last year.

Oliver Burwood, its chief executive, said this helped school office team members with “nerve-wracking” Ofsted data checks.

His executive heads’ capacity was often spread across three to four schools, so the trust added extra “layers of support” to help make the system work.

‘We’re not going in classrooms changing things’

 Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) said it limited additional staff to those “specifically required” by inspectors. 

The 40-school trust sent between two to four central team members to its inspections last year, which covered the period that Oliver was in charge of the trust.

The staff “typically maintain their usual office-based roles to avoid disrupting the school’s natural dynamics”, an OGAT spokesperson said. 

Oxford Diocesan Schools sent one additional staff member to each of its inspections last year. 

‘We are in the building to make sure that leaders are OK’

Anne Dellar, its chief executive, said leaders were “not going into classrooms” or “changing things”.

“It’s really high stakes for leaders…We are in the building not to flood the school (with people), but to make sure that leaders are OK – they are part of a team and we support them.”

“People think if MAT central team people turn up, we are changing the outcome of inspection. We’re not, we are living the inspection of the school because it’s our school.”

Steve Rollett, the deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said that trying to separate shared trust staff from schools “completely misunderstands the point of school trusts: the trust is the school, and the school is the trust. 

“They are the same organisation, and simply because someone working on curriculum or data may not have an office in a school does not stop them being an integral part of what teachers and pupils there do every day.”

Inspectors have ‘significant concerns’

Some central team staff will have now been involved in dozens of inspections over the past few years.

Burwood said having central staff in inspections was “really helpful” on the “rare occasions” they were needed to “push back on inspectors’ behaviour”.

“It should be a typical day [in the school], but typically, our headteachers do a wonderful job.

“We want to support them to show the work that they do and not be blindsided by an inspection process, which can be really, really stressful.”

But inspectors have “significant concerns”.

Last month Oliver claimed that some trust leaders were “putting pressure on inspectors and making the inspection process more adversarial”.

Matt Newman, national officer for Ofsted at the FDA union, which represents HMIs, told Schools Week drafting trust staff in was “an issue our members have experienced and have significant concerns about”.

“If the settings for inspections are employing these kind of tactics – making substantial changes on inspection days, when ‘normal practice’ is what’s meant to be evaluated – it’s difficult to see how our members can do their jobs effectively.”

‘Questions equitability of inspections’

Tom Middlehurst, the ASCL leaders’ union’s Ofsted expert, said it was “reasonable” for inspectors to look at whether the number of trust staff on site was necessary.

But there was “no hard and fast rule” because trusts were structured and operated in different ways.

“This could raise questions about the equitability of inspections because smaller trusts and maintained schools may not have access to the same level of support.” 

Kent County Council, England’s largest local authority, said it did not not draft staff into schools during inspections.

But Liz Robinson, the chief executive at the Big Education Trust, said: “It’s not like that didn’t happen before there were MATs, because it did.

“As a local authority head, nothing stops you bringing all your mates in who are local authority heads or lead inspectors [for the council].”

MATs were just using their resources “to do well at the game that they have to play. Does that make that unfair for other people? Yes, bigger trusts have more resources.”

‘A cliff-edge experience’

Keziah Featherstone, who co-chairs the Headteachers Roundtable policy group, said the practice also showed Ofsted was “still an absolute cliff edge experience” for leaders.

“Too much is at risk, so you try and mitigate as many risks as possible.” 

Ormiston also said using central staff for cover was “good for staff, more cost effective and better for pupils”.

Loic Menzies, a policy expert, said the the question was “whether that advantage [large trusts have] is a true reflection of the advantage that being in the trust offers them – or a cosmetic exercise to help them secure a good inspection?”

Labour has pledged to introduce trust inspections, but it is not a priority. Ofsted has also consulted on how best to inspect groups of schools.

Menzies added: “Perhaps this is yet another reason why we need a proper system of trust inspection that delves into the true quality of support that a trust offers its schools – and the system as a whole.”