This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Hundreds of schools in England are stuck in a decade-long rut of poor performance that is “nothing short of a scandal” and threatens to undermine the country’s quality of education, the chief inspector of schools has told MPs.

In an outspoken letter to parliament’s public accounts committee, Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, detailed a series of major risks to the school system in England, including several comments that are critical of government policy.

She highlighted the nearly 500 state schools she described as “stuck”, having been rated as either inadequate or requiring improvement in every Ofsted inspection since 2005.

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“That these schools remain poor for so long means that, for some children, in certain areas, there may be no opportunity to attend a good school at any point in their education. This is nothing short of a scandal and is a betrayal of children’s futures,” Spielman said.

An analysis of the more than 290 primary schools and 190 secondaries found considerable variation between regions but a common pattern was discovered among schools where the proportion of white British pupils eligible for free school meals was well above the national average.

Ofsted intends to evaluate the plans to improve these schools and examine why they have failed in the past.

Spielman also criticised the use of performance tables and targets to rank schools, saying she saw evidence of a decline in the quality of education because of “an endemic pattern of prioritising data and performance results, ahead of the real substance of education”.

Ofsted found examples of primary schools in effect suspending their final year to focus exclusively on end-of-year tests, “rather than encouraging children to grapple with new mathematical concepts or encouraging them to read widely”, Spielman said.

“Furthermore, despite the fact that the vast majority of schools and teachers have never wanted to engage in ‘gaming the system’, when they see other schools doing the same, they feel pressured to emulate those schools or risk poor league table positions.”

But the chief inspector also said Ofsted had seen no evidence that cuts to school budgets had resulted in a decline.

“In recent years, as funding growth has slowed, school leaders have had to work harder to balance their budgets and we see this necessitating some difficult choices. Currently, however, my inspectors are not seeing an impact on education standards,” Spielman said, in comments that will come as some relief to the Department for Education (DfE).

But Spielman did criticise funding levels for post-16 education, including further education and skills, and urged the government to increase funding for 16-18 education.

She also remains at odds with the DfE over her call for schools classed as “outstanding” to be open to inspection and for Ofsted to have powers to examine the management of multi-academy trusts, which successive education secretaries have rejected.

“To remain properly valid, inspection must reach every level at which decisions are being made, otherwise we will only ever be able to give the DfE, parents and parliament a partial view of what is happening in our schools,” she said.

“That brings with it very real risks that have started to show themselves in some recent high-profile failures of academy trusts.”