In its election manifesto, the government committed to “bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system”.

This is a significant shift in the accountability landscape, and it would not be honest of me to say that I don’t hold some reservations.

To be clear, I don’t question the need for trusts to be accountable. Indeed, they are already frequently under the microscope - through engagement with the Department for Education’s Regions Group, through strict financial audit processes, and every time one of their schools is inspected by Ofsted.

Why inspect trusts?

Most of my worry stems from the fact that it is not yet clear what purpose the additional layer of inspection of school groups might serve in order to justify the likely burden it will place on the system: leaders, teachers, support staff and our volunteer governance workforce.

Government should address this by clarifying the intended purpose ahead of any development work.

While it might be tempting to think that we could add value by inspecting the central working of trusts, the reality is more complex.

For one thing, trusts’ “central” functions exist only so far as they allow trusts to fulfil their charitable objective: to advance education for the public benefit. Largely the outcome of this work is about what happens in schools, which is already accounted for in school inspection.

Two key problems

Another issue is that we would need a more detailed conception of quality that would underpin a trust inspection framework. Two problems exist in this regard.

Firstly, trusts of different sizes, geographies or phases, with or without specialist provision, can look very different in terms of how they operate. Finding a framework that works meaningfully - and adds value - across all of these will be hard.

Secondly, there is not a universally agreed evidence base to deploy that would illustrate what quality looks like, especially across that range of contexts.

A risk is that an inspection framework starts to shape and dictate practice in ways that might not be beneficial to the organisation and the children it serves. And we have been here before with school-level inspection.

But I’m nothing if not a pragmatist, and I recognise the way democracy functions. A party is elected on the basis of its manifesto and it usually expects to enact the contents. And this government seems keen to press ahead with the policy of trust inspection.

Will it put MATs off struggling schools?

That being the case, it’s essential that the policy is well thought through and that it should do no harm. A key litmus test for the inspection of trusts will be whether it supports or disincentivises trusts from taking on schools that most need their support.

Anything that makes this important work harder for trusts would be catastrophic for children.

This is why today we’ve published a new paper on trust inspection. It basically says to government, Ofsted and anyone interested in this policy area, “This might not be where we’d have started from, but if you’re going to do it, then think about these things.”

We set out a range of considerations, partly in an attempt to illustrate the risks involved but also as a genuinely constructive contribution to the policy development. The final section of the paper describes a high-level model that we think best balances the various risks and the better solutions.

One broader point we make is that while an argument is made that other forms of school group are analogous to trusts, such as federations, then these groups should also be subject to inspection on the same basis.

Strategic insight

The model we outline is based on the strategic insight of education, not surveillance of central offices.

This means bringing together the insights from school-level inspections, which are here to stay for the foreseeable, to build a picture of the systemic quality of the schools, and exploring leaders’ strategic work in developing strengths and addressing weaknesses.

On grading, we make the case that grading groups, especially with the same scale used at school level, is a recipe for confusion.

What would a parent make of a trust that has a high grade at group level when the schools within it are graded worse, or vice versa? And, more fundamentally still, what use would parents make of a group-level grade in any case?

This returns us to where we started: a trust, or other school group for that matter, is as effective as the schools it runs.

It’s important that any new form of inspection doesn’t blur this.

Steve Rollett is deputy CEO of the Confederation of School Trusts

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