Tag Archives: ofsted

‘Stuck’ schools – who teaches in these schools?

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The DfE has today updated the ad hoc data about schools eligible for RISE support. Schools in the RISE programme are those with support from the Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence advisers and teams. According to the data, some 50 schools have been eligible for the programme for 11 years or more.  Schools eligible for RISE intervention – GOV.UK

To become eligible for RISE a school must be a ‘stuck’ school.

A ‘stuck’ school is defined as a state-funded school that was graded Requires Improvement – or equivalent – at its most recent Ofsted inspection and was also graded below Good at its previous Ofsted inspection.

Where inspections have been completed subsequent to the removal of single headline grades in September 2024 (and in the interim before report cards are introduced), for the definition of stuck schools and for the purpose of its intervention policy, DfE treats a sub-judgement of Requires Improvement for leadership and management and/or quality of education for a school inspected in 2024/25 academic year as equivalent to a previous single headline grade of Requires Improvement.

Following the introduction of Ofsted school report cards, the definition of stuck schools will be updated to “schools which receive a ‘needs attention’ grade for leadership and governance, which were graded below good, or equivalent, at their previous Ofsted inspection”. 

At 30 June 2025 there were 639 stuck schools, and 292,000 pupils in those schools.

Of those:

  • 372 are primary schools, 235 are secondary schools, 21 are special schools and 11 are pupil referral units
  • 90 are local authority maintained schools and 549 are academies or free schools (although some of these were not academies at the time of their most recent inspection)
  • Across the spring, summer and autumn RISE cohorts, 396 academies and local authority maintained schools have been identified for targeted RISE intervention. As of 31 July 2025, 377 schools remain in the programme, 349 of which are stuck and 28 of which are academies in a category of concern.
  • Of the remaining stuck schools, some have changed responsible body since their most recent inspection and are therefore not eligible.  Others will be considered for inclusion in later cohorts.

On average, as at 30 June 2025, the 639 stuck schools were graded by Ofsted as below Good or equivalent for 5.6 years.

  • The 372 primary schools that are stuck have been rated below Good or equivalent for an average of 4.7 years.
  • The 235 secondary schools that are stuck have been rated below Good or equivalent for an average of 6.9 years.
  • On average, as 31 July 2025, the 377 schools in receipt of targeted RISE intervention from the RISE advisers and teams, were graded by Ofsted as below Good or equivalent for 5.8 years. Of these, 50 were below Good for more than 11 years.

As might be expected, ‘stuck’ schools as a group exhibit lower outcomes and higher absence and suspension/exclusions than other school of a similar type.

This data concentrates on pupil outcomes. What I think would be more interesting is information about staffing. How often has the headteacher changed during the past decade in a ‘stuck’ school. What is the turnover of teaching staff, and how many are ‘unqualified’ or on programmes to become qualified compared with other local schools?

Until it is possible to match data about staffing to outcomes, we are not likely to learn anything new. I started my career in the 1970s in a school that undoubtedly would now be one of the 50 with eleven years of issues with performance. Staffing was always an issue throughout the seven years I spent at the school. Not surprisingly, when falling rolls became an issue, it was one of the schools to be amalgamated out of existence. I wonder whether that will be the fate of some of these schools over the next few years?

 I am also remined of the book edited by Paul Marshall in 2013, and call ‘The Tail’ that discussed the issue of under-performance in schools across England. In the introduction he wrote that:

‘.. for good teachers to be deployed in the most challenging schools… reforms to the delivery and accountability of child and adolescent mental health services; and perhaps new types of dedicated provision for the tail.’ The Tail page 17.

No doubt RISE was one outcome, and it would also be interesting to know if any of the 50 schools with the longest eligibility have had access to support from the Teach First programme? We know almost everything there is to know about the pupils, but nowhere near enough about the teachers. Time for a rethink on the workings of the labour market for teachers?

New research on teacher supply

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The NfER has today published a detailed report on teacher supply and its implications for learning. Teacher supply and shortages: the implications of teacher supply challenges for schools and pupils – NFER Many of the conclusions in their report will not come as any surprise to regular readers of this blog. After all, there have been many posts discussing the issue – even as recently as the post on whether PE is now a shortage subject – during the lifetime of this blog.

Whilst I find most of the conclusions unsurprising, there are some that are interesting.  Figure 15 suggests that a higher percentage of responses from schools in the North East than in London fell in the ‘most difficult’ category, although to be fair, schools in the North East also topped the percentage in terms of response of ‘least difficult’. It may be that the starting salary in London is still high enough to attract teachers not yet interested in buying into the housing market and content to share rented properties.

I am surprised at the reported level of recruitment challenge faced by schools in the primary sector, where supply ought to be more than adequate across most of England.

The overall conclusion that schools are only able to provide some teaching by the use of non-specialist teaching must be of concern. The alternative is to stop teaching certain subjects either entirely or to limit the number of groups offered a subject. However, for key subjects, such as mathematics and English not teaching the subject is not possible in most schools.

The authors of the report also concluded that ‘challenges with teacher recruitment may also be having a disproportionate impact on schools with low Ofsted ratings, and school leaders’ efforts to improve outcomes. There is likely to be a complex relationship between a school’s Ofsted rating and recruitment challenges, rather than a simple effect of an Ofsted rating downgrade making it more challenging to recruit.’

 However, they further comment that ‘… our survey data suggests there seems to be an association between a low Ofsted rating and increased recruitment challenges. These recruitment challenges may exacerbate the challenges of improving the quality of education in the school, whether through leaders doing more teaching reducing leadership capacity, lower-quality teachers being employed, or other related factors.’ Whether recruitment challenges have resulted in the downgrading of outstanding schools also reported today is an interesting question that merits further study.

In a fortnight’s time the DfE should publish the 2022 ITT Census and that will provide schools with a picture of the recruitment round for September 2023 and January 2024. It seems likely that once again recruitment targets will be missed, thus providing schools with more of a dilemma over staffing.

Perhaps, NfER might next year look in more depth at the actions that the DfE might take to ensure a fair distribution of teachers between schools in what is in some subjects now becoming a scare resource. Should every school have access to at least one specialist in every curriculum area?

The NfER might also investigate the extent to which post-entry subject enhancing CPD makes any difference to the expertise of the teaching force.

Should middle leaders be qualified for the role?

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‘Teachers at schools with an Ofsted rating ‘requires improvement’ were significantly more likely to be greatly concerned about disengagement from learning (29%, compared with 14% of teachers at schools with an Ofsted rating ‘outstanding’)’ School and College Panel: December 2021 wave (publishing.service.gov.uk) Page 55.

This finding from the DfE’s Wave Study from December 2021 will surely surprise nobody. However, it has serious implications for such schools especially as the study also highlights the fact that teachers in schools ‘with the highest proportions of pupils eligible for FSM, 35% (of teachers were) greatly concerned about an increase in behaviour issues and 26% about disengagement from learning (compared with 20% and 9% respectively among those with the lowest proportions of pupils eligible for FSM).’

Schools reported on their workforce concerns in the same survey. Overall, schools were most concerned about not having sufficient numbers of teaching assistants and cover supervisors (two-thirds, or 67% of schools). They were also concerned about not having sufficient numbers of teaching staff (50%), supply staff (42%), non-teaching staff (37%) and leadership staff (36%). (Page 7)

In terms of issues relating to their workforce the majority of schools were concerned about stress/burnout of current staff (82%) and staff absence due to COVID-19 related illness (72%). Just under two[1]thirds (59%) of schools were concerned about funding, while just under half (46%) were concerned about staff absence due to seasonal/flu illness. Roughly a quarter to a third of schools were also concerned about staff absence due to isolation (35%), recruitment of teachers (26%) and retention of teachers (22%).

December is usually one of the low points for recruitment, so school leaders were clearly already worried about recruitment for 2022 in December 2021, and only to a slightly lessor degree about the retention of staff.

As recent blog posts have shown, concerns about recruitment were valid for many schools, and the lack of trainees joining the teaching workforce this September is a matter of considerable concern nationally in many secondary school subjects.

At present, it is too early in the recruitment cycle for September to tell whether the types of school highlighted at the top of this blog are facing more severe recruitment and retention issues if they have anything other than ‘outstanding’ ratings from Ofsted. The levelling up agenda requires schools to be fully staffed with appropriately trained teachers, especially if the ambition is not only to deal with the consequences of the pandemic but also to reduce the gap in achievement between schools by levelling up is to be met.

No doubt, the issue of staffing and outcomes will be in the minds of those that research the consequences of the levelling up ambition of government.  In my mind, the issue of well prepared and supported middle leaders is a key component in the ambition to improve outcomes.

The survey results on understanding of National Professional Qualifications are concerning in the respect of developing middle leaders.

‘Over half of leaders and teachers (55%) said that they had heard of the new National Professional Qualifications (NPQs). Leaders were much more likely than teachers to have heard of the new NPQs (93% vs. 49%).

Nearly a fifth (18%) of those who had heard of NPQs said that they had applied to undertake one since June 2021, with those working in primary schools (20%) more likely to have applied than those in secondary schools (15%).

Among leaders and teachers that had not applied for an NPQ since June 2021, a quarter (25%) intended to apply in the future, with a third (33%) saying they didn’t know, leaving two-fifths (43%) not intending to apply for an NPQ.’ (Page 9)

It was worrying that 64% of teachers said that they ‘didn’t have enough time to complete a qualification’. (Page 42) If this means that many would-be or even will-be middle leaders enter that role unprepared, then little progress has been made in professional development since the 1970s.

Middle leaders in any organisation are key to the success of the organisation and schools are no exception to this rule.

Attendance Group must address in-year admissions issue

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I recently caught up with news about the DfE’s Attendance Group, and the Minutes of its December meeting.  Attendance Action Alliance January meeting notes: 9 December 2021 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

I am delighted to discover the high-profile nature of membership the Group and that the Secretary of State has taken an interest, as owner of the work. However, although the Group discussed the question of a register for home educated children and the concerns over those children just missing school on a regular basis, I didn’t find any emphasis on ensuring that children taken into care are offered a school palace as swiftly as possible and within set time limits. The same standards also need to be put in place for children with special needs whose parents move to a new location during the school year and need a new school placement.

Taking a new job should not be conditional on whether there is a special school place available for your child.

In a previous post on this blog, calling for a ‘Jacob’s Law’, I laid out the case for in-year admissions to academies not to be held up by such schools not wanting to admit such children. The 2016 Education White Paper: Education Excellence Everywhere recognised there was an issue with in-year admissions to academies because local authorities had no powers to over-rule the decision of a school not to admit a pupil. This was why Jacob was out of school when he died. Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Sadly, nothing significant has changed since 2016. I hope that the Attendance Group will consider the issue of in-year admissions at a future meeting, and not just focus on the parents that don’t send their children to school. The system must work for the benefit of all and not just those that are easy to educate. The same is the case of children with SEND requiring in-year admission to a school.

These young people must not be ignored, and just offering tutoring is not the same as admission to a school. Home tutoring doesn’t provide the same social interaction that being in a school provides however good the ‘virtual school’ is at its job.

Of course, there are risks where the school community is hostile to incomers and many schools could well look to improve the transfer experience for in-year admissions that can be even worse than that experienced by pupils transferring at the start of the school-year.

Being taken into care as a school-age child is a traumatic experience, and we owe it to these children to make sure that their education is affected as little as possible. So, it is my hope that the Attendance Group will as a minimum endorse the 2016 White Paper suggestions and, if possible, go further and set time limits for school places to be offered to children taken into care and requiring a new school placement. For most, it wasn’t their fault that they have ended up in the care of the local authority where all the secondary schools are academies.

ITT Review: prelude to a cull?

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The DfE today published the long awaited ITT Market Review Final Report on Initial Teacher Training. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review-report and the associated consultation. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review

This type of exercise comes along about once in every generation. Thirty years ago it was the establishment of the Teacher Training Agency and fifteen years ago, the desire to move towards a Masters Degree profession by the Labour government.

This Review that is unsigned and totally anonymous, is strong in certain areas, but lamentably weak in others. The outstanding changes that may cause issues in my view are not the content of training per se, as governments have taken an active interest in that before, although the section on synthetic phonics only being permitted as the way to teach reading does read a tad dictatorial. To me the fun will be around the Intensive Teaching 20 days, and the lengthening of courses to 38 weeks, especially f this is expected to take place within a funding envelope designed for higher education classroom courses of 30 weeks. Reaction to these changes will be worth watching closely.

Change there has to be. The primary teacher market is facing a period of over-supply resulting from the fall in the birth rate and possible loss of young families back to other EU countries as well as the age profile of the teaching force. A rationale for keeping the good providers allows for reductions in provision on a basis less open to challenge than one with no rationale behind the cuts when they come.

Such a reduction in places is still a couple of years away for secondary teacher providers, but this Review won’t have much effect before the 2024 labour market, by which time secondary schools in some areas will be seeing reductions in their intakes with a knock-on effect on the demand for teachers.

Who will be the winners form this review? It is difficult to assess at this stage, as the age-old question of rewarding good providers versus a sensible national distribution of training places didn’t really receive an airing in the Review except around Teaching School hubs.

Will schools want to take on the burden of longer courses with more intensive mentoring and an associated bureaucracy that will inevitable accompany the required control of content and progress.  If not, will MATs see it as their function. Clearly local authorities and diocese aren’t in the running for lead providers as they don’t rate a mention. Curiously, since it has operated a model possibly not a million miles away from what is being advocated, Teach First as a programme is seemingly ignored in the section on employment-based entry routes into teaching.

Overall, the approach seems to me to be a blend of a more centralised curriculum around a delivery structure reminiscent of the Area Training Organisations set up after World War Two.

The good news is that with a rethink about professional development that has withered on the vine for much of this century, other than for government led priorities, there might be a revival of the concept of  professional development centres where teacher can come together to learn. Alongside this there ought to be an evaluation of a career structure of the type once provided by local advisory and support services.

In the end, deciding what to do and how to do it that is the meat of this Review is the easy part. Solving the crisis of teacher supply so that every child has a great teacher is a much greater challenge, and one that this Review largely ducked despite its title.

Sprinkler systems needed in school buildings

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On the 15th April 2019 this blog carried a post headed ‘Install Sprinkler Systems’. This followed a call to ensure all new schools had sprinkler system built into them during construction.

Zurich Insurance, a major insurer for local government risks has now come out in support of this suggestion in a new report. A review of their view can be found in this link to pbctoday https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/health-safety-news/fire-risk-in-schools/81974/

I fully support the recommendation that all schools should be built with sprinkler systems for the reasons cited in my blog post of April 2019.

Zurich found that the average school posed a fire risk 1.7 times greater than non-residential buildings. When compared to 2.9 million non-household properties, school buildings were also three times more likely to fall into the ‘high’ fire risk category (58% vs 20%).

According to Zurich’s research, in the last three years malfunctioning appliances or equipment, faulty electrics, arson and kitchen blazes are among the leading causes of school fires. Larger fires in schools cost on average £2.8m to repair and in some cases over £20m. Bigger and older schools, including those with a canteen, and secondary schools – which have more complex and dangerous equipment – were identified as particularly at risk.

Of particular concern was the fact that there was a correlation between poor Ofsted ratings and greater risk of fire was also identified in the analysis. If buildings can influence learning, then this is a factor that needs to be taken into account in relation to any school-rebuilding programme. Poor learning conditions don’t motivate pupils to learn.

Zurich echo what I said in 2019, by concluding that:

“Burnt out schools and classrooms cause major disruption to children’s education, with repairs leading to months or even years of upheaval. They also result in the loss of spaces which local communities rely on out of school hours.

As well as protecting pupils, sprinklers drastically reduce the extent of damage when there is a blaze, often confining the fire to a single room. This gets children back into schools and classrooms quicker as well as saving taxpayers’ money.”

The case for installing sprinklers seems overwhelming, and I hope that the government will review the present building guidance and rules and reinstate a mandatory requirement for sprinkler systems in all new schools being built from now onwards. Retrofitting existing schools would be much more expensive, but could still be justified in reducing the consequences of a fire in a school on children’s education.  

Stuck Schools

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This Report from Ofsted is an important addition to the discussions aound school improvement and deserves to sit alongside other HMI documents on this topic. For those of my generation these include the famous ’10 Good Schools’ report of some 40 years ago.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fight-or-flight-how-stuck-schools-are-overcoming-isolation/fight-or-flight-how-stuck-schools-are-overcoming-isolation-evaluation-report

Using the terms ‘stuck’ and ‘unstuck’ schools, tells it as it is. I was especially struck by the paragraph in the Executive Summary that said:

‘Most stuck and unstuck schools stated that they had received too much school improvement advice from too many different quarters of the school system. Often, the advice was intended to help schools with their improvement strategy. However, this rarely had the intended impact. Leaders perceived that the quality of the advice itself was often lacking. School leaders also commented on a poor match between the problems of the school and the advice on offer. While many were concerned about the lack of support available following inspection, schools often welcomed the fresh thinking and impetus that independent inspection had given them. Schools did not appear to be inhibited from discussing some of the challenges of inspection during this project.’

Ofsted’s suggests that there is enough capacity in the system to move ‘stuck’ schools forward, but that the content of the support, including whether it enables focused may be lacking.  There also needs to be effective action that responds directly to the issues identified. Additionally, is the support for a ‘stuck’ school best provided internally or externally to the school or MAT and there is also a question about the quality of those coordinating or delivering the support?

This last point is important as the fractured governance model for schools sometimes makes it difficult to identify the organisation responsible for taking the lead role in actually improving these schools.

What is the penalty for failure? Obviously, for local authorities and maintained schools, it is a transfer to become an academy. But what of academies? And, especially what of academies that are part of faith-led MATs where the Church doesn’t want to give up running the school, but cannot stop it being a ‘stuck’ school within a reasonable period of time?

Should there be a review of each Office of Regional School Commissioner to establish a baseline of the number of ‘stuck’ schools and a target for improvement that has consequences if not met? Alternatively, should the Office of Regional School Commissioner be abolished and a closer link to local democracy be once again added to our school system?

Finally, there needs to be a discussion about both funding for ‘stuck’ schools and how any extra funding is allocated under a National Funding Formula that clearly doesn’t take fully into account the fact that some pupils need more resources to achieve a desired level of outcome than do others.

Staff Development, and especially leadership development, also needs to be looked at afresh by the DfE. Should we re-introduce a qualification for leadership with modules about leading a ‘stuck school’? At least then the system would have a better idea of capacity to support and ‘unstick’ these schools.

We cannot allow the next decade to be wasted as the last one has been in so many cases as far as the education of these young people is concerned.

 

Who is in control of education spending?

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On Election Day, the DfE published the annual dataset for expenditure by local authorities on children services, including maintained schools. The figures, as they relate to schools, are generally meaningless on a year by year comparison basis as the DfE doesn’t remove the new academies from the previous years’ data when they were still maintained schools.

For children’s social services and youth Justice, the data does have meaning over several years because local authorities still administer these services. However, there are few indicators to link expenditure to demand. In areas such as ‘children taken into care’, where numbers of children have been increasing in some areas this fact isn’t clear from the presentation of the data.

Research by the Reform think tank using this data shows that 28% of local authority maintained secondary schools in England were in the red at the end of 2018-19, with an average deficit of £570,000.

Reform found that since 2010-11, the proportion of local authority-funded secondary schools with no cash reserves has almost doubled. However, this is not surprising since to become an academy a school must normally not have a deficit.

The proportion of primary schools in deficit is smaller at 8%, having increased by 2.1 percentage points over the same period. The study also found “drastic” variations between schools, with 36% of maintained secondary schools having an “excessive surplus” of cash in the bank – on average more than £390,000.

Generally, in 2018-19 the gap between the average surplus and the average deficit has doubled over the period since 2010-11. At the end of 2018-19 there was more than 30 secondary schools with deficits in excess of £1 million. Only six of these schools were in London, with the Boroughs of Croydon and Enfield each containing two such schools. There were no schools in either the East of England or the East Midlands with deficits in excess of £1 million. The West Midlands, on the other hand, had six such schools.

The largest deficit, of more than £3 was linked to a school in West London that has run deficits in excess of £400,000 in each of the last four years, according to the DfE financial monitoring site for schools https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/school/detail?urn=102449&tab=Balance&unit=AbsoluteMoney&format=Charts#financialSummary Its revenue reserve per pupil were running at a staggering minus £4,614 per pupil at the end of 2018-19. Interestingly, an Ofsted monitoring visit report from October this year doesn’t mention the financial situation at all, so presumably there isn’t seen to be an issue with a deficit of this magnitude? The last full inspection report from October 2018 also fails to mention the financial situation, and any effect it might have on the school’s ability to perform its core function of teaching and learning.

The data on maintained school finances does seem to suggest that there might be a lack of accountability for financial stability and the methods of managing deficits. There seems little point in a National Funding Formula if some schools can drive a coach and horses through the outcomes and rack up large deficits.

What is probably revealed is that some schools need more funding to achieve their aims, and with devolved budgets and governance it isn’t clear who has to take overall responsibility in the present climate.

Interesting data from ofsted

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The Regional Director of ofsted spent just over an hour answering questions at a meeting earlier this week of Oxfordshire’s Education Scrutiny Committee. Sadly, neither the press nor any members of the public turned up to hear this interesting and informative exchange of views.

One of the questions posed by the Committee was about schools ranked ‘outstanding’ on previous criteria and whether the judgement will remain when the new Framework, currently out to consultation, comes into force. There doesn’t seem to be a mechanism to reset the dial when there is a major change in the inspection framework.

This question was thrown into sharp focus later this week by ofsted’s publication of inspection outcomes for the autumn term of 2018. This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/state-funded-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-as-at-31-december-2018

Of the 102 schools classified as ‘exempt’ under the 2011 legislation, that were subject to a full inspection, 12 schools (12%) remained outstanding, 50 (49%) declined to good, 35 (34%) declined to requires improvement and five (5%) declined to inadequate. The fact that four out ten of these schools declined to either ‘requires improvement’ or the category of ‘inadequate’, in five cases, must be of concern. A further 15 ‘outstanding’ schools had a short inspection and, thus, remained with the same outcome.

Ofsted also commented that the number of schools that had improved from ‘requires improvement’ had declined, compared with previous years. However, ofsted noted that ‘This may be a sign that the remaining schools have more entrenched problems and will be harder to turn around.’

Ofsted has also looked at schools in the government’s opportunity areas that have received extra cash outside of the normal funding arrangements. As might be expected, there was a 10% different between the percentage of schools rated as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in these areas and the national percentage of such schools. As ofsted observed, ‘The lower percentage of good and outstanding schools in opportunity areas is to be expected, as the areas were chosen on the basis of the problems they were experiencing.’

No doubt, at some point in the future, ofsted will comment on both the use of funding in these areas and the difference it makes to schools outside those areas, but facing similar or even more extreme challenges.

In the present complex structure of governance, the lack of local robust school improvement teams offering help to all schools, whether maintained, standalone academies, small or even large MATs means that ofsted can often only inspect after a school has begun to decline. Good local school improvement teams, funded across all schools, might well be able to prevent some declines from happening. MATs can make this happen as they can top slice their schools, but other schools cannot as easily do so.

When the country finally emerges from its Brexit travails, this is but one of many issues that will need to be addressed. One can but hope that such an outcome will be decided sooner rather than later.

Employing NQTs

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Recently, I asked Ofsted if they could provide me with a list of schools not allowed to employ NQTs, following an inspection of the school, so I could have a look at a range of job advertisements to see how the recommendation was being presented to possible applicants, including NQTs. Following an FOI request, Ofsted informed me on Friday that

‘… we do not record collated information relating to the appointment of NQTs. Each inspection is regarded as a standalone inspection event, and statements regarding the appointment of NQTs are made in the individual reports and subsequent monitoring letters for each inspection.’

They suggested that I use the published data on inspections, last updated to August 2018.

The appointment of NQTs differs between maintained schools and academies because maintained schools provide a period of induction. Thus, with regard to maintained schools, induction may not be served in a school that has been judged to require special measures, unless HMCI has given permission in writing. School Inspection Handbook paras 98 and para 121.

For all schools, a school placed in special measures following a full Section 5 inspection, the report must include a judgement (or recommendation in the case of academies and presumably free schools) about whether a school should be permitted to employ NQTs. School Inspection Handbook Section 8 para 173. This judgement can be changed at subsequent monitoring reports.

Now this raises two interesting issues in my mind. Firstly, maintained schools declared inadequate these days must normally become an academy and part of a multi-academy trust or committee. The inadequate school is closed, and no Ofsted report is available for the new school. Presumably, the new academy is perfectly entitled to hire NQTs from day one, since the new school has no recommendation resulting from an inspection report. This seems a little concerning. In one case the report on the closing schools said ‘strongly recommend do not appoint NQTs’. Should the new academy recognise and act on this judgement?

The second issue emerged from looking into what is happening on the ground. Viewing records for some of these schools converting to become an academy after an ‘inadequate’ judgement by Ofsted, has identified a concern about the amount of time an academy emerging from an ‘inadequate’ judgement on a maintained school is taking to receive an inspection report. The school that received an inspection report ‘strongly recommending do not employ NQTs’ seemingly had not received a published monitoring report more than a year after it opened as an academy.

A third issue is that not all inspection reports declaring a school ‘inadequate’ appear to mention in the report anything about employing NQTs. Almost half of the inspection reports on secondary schools in London identified as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted inspectors that I viewed didn’t seem to mention anything about employing NQTs in the report. That’s also a worry. Indeed, recording use of Pupil Premium seemed of more concern in reports that statements about employing NQTs.

Arising from this is a fourth issue. If a school cannot employ an NQT, should it be allowed to employ any unqualified teachers? There must be a presumption that if a school cannot support NQTs, then they also cannot support an even less qualified person in their classrooms?

Am I worrying unduly or can readers tell me of instances where they didn’t know Ofsted had said ‘don’t employ NQTs’, but the schools had gone ahead and employed them.  Did it work out?