Schools: Inspection

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. School inspection plays an important role in both the publicly funded and independent sectors to ensure quality of provision, to protect the interests of pupils and to ensure that parents have reliable information about schools. The Education and Skills Bill now provides an opportunity for us to secure the high quality of independent school inspection and give this system a clear legislative foundation. Independent schools in England are required to meet the statutory standards set out in the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2003 (as amended) and are inspected regularly to ensure that they do so. The existence of independent inspectorates allows for simultaneous inspection against both statutory standards and other criteria. For example, the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) checks that schools that belong to the Independent Schools Council (ISC) meet a range of criteria that have to be met in order to belong to ISC. In addition, since 2005 we have been approached by smaller school groupings that want to form their own school inspectorates. We have therefore proposed to take powers to set criteria for the approval and withdrawal of approval of inspectorates. The proposed criteria cover issues such as the qualifications and experience of inspectors, the inspection framework, management and quality assurance of inspections, public confidence in inspectorates, complaints handling, financial viability and the schools to be covered by new inspectorates. Our proposed criteria were set out in a consultation document published on 21 January 2008 and we have published our consultation response at www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conResults.cfm?consultationId=1528 today. Responses to the consultation have been positive and constructive and I am grateful to all those who have participated. In its response to the consultation and subsequently, Ofsted has provided evidence that the quality of independent inspection and public confidence in this system will best be promoted by a system of larger inspectorates. It concludes that such a system will make it easier to secure consistent assessment of standards, help to prevent the inspector body from becoming overfamiliar with the school groups with which it was associated and promote public confidence about an inspectorate’s breadth of perspective and genuine independence from the schools that it inspects. This analysis has led us to re-examine the criteria for size, diversity and the composition of the inspectorial workforce that we consulted on in January. We are therefore today launching a supplementary, limited consultation with those who responded to the initial consultation and other key stakeholders, in which we propose a higher minimum threshold of 350 schools. I have placed a copy of this further consultation in the Library of the House.