Just as the nation’s parents, teachers and pupils were dusting down Halloween costumes, hanging cobwebs and carving pumpkins, Ofsted’s chief inspector was penning a letter to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that is very likely to scare the living daylights out of schools across the country.

In the public letter, HMCI Amanda Spielman highlighted what she described as the “scandal” of a new semi-official category of schools - those she has dubbed “stuck”.

So what exactly are “stuck” schools, we hear you ask from behind clenched fists. Well, there’s 490 of them, and Spielman called their existence “nothing short of a scandal, and a betrayal of children’s futures”.

In simple terms, these are schools that have been consistently judged as less than “good” since 2005. “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,” Spielman wrote.

Ofsted will carry out research to understand why interventions in “stuck” schools have failed.

Schools stuck in a funding crisis

The letter also contained potential treats for the wider education sector, not just tricks. Spielman urged the government to use the 2019 spending review to increase the base rate for 16-18 funding.

She wrote that while it was true to say that spending per pupil in primary and secondary schools had increased significantly in real terms since the early 1990s (you just tell them that …), “the same is not true for further education and skills [FES] spending”.

“The real-term cuts to FES funding are affecting the sustainability and quality of FES provision,” the chief inspector warned.

The same can’t be said for the standard of education in schools, according to Spielman. In her letter, she repeated that inspectors have not seen an impact of funding pressures in primary and secondary schools.