Ofsted is looking to spy on the Facebook accounts of parents and pupils to help predict failing schools.

The school's watchdog is looking at the possibility of using social media to help predict which schools are at risk of a drop in performance.

In a new document Ofsted reveals it is talking to the government about a project that would explore how data and information gathered from the internet could be used to "predict and prevent" declines in standards.

Any work that Ofsted does in this area would be confined to open online forums, the watchdog said.

The move potentially means that the inspectorate could look at individual or group public social media accounts, such as those of parents or pupils.

Ofsted's latest innovation and regulation plan says that it will be "engaging with Department for Education in a data science project to explore the possibility of using near-realtime data and information from social media and other sources to predict and prevent decline in school performance".