Ofsted should start inspecting how well schools collaborate with one another, a new report has claimed.

All schools should be expected to work with their neighbours, it says, adding that Ofsted should inspect how successfully they do so.

The call comes in a policy paper published by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services today.

It argues that “school-to-school collaboration” is an “effective means of challenge and improvement” and could improve achievement by “drawing on the strengths within and between local systems”.  

The report also calls for a “national data-sharing protocol” in which all schools, including academies and free schools, would have to share performance data with their local authorities.

Children’s service directors have complained in the past that a refusal by academy heads to share such data has made it difficult to hold schools to account.

The report also says that a “vocational route of excellence” should be established, so that studying vocational subjects is regarded as being “of equal value to the traditional academic pathway.”

New schools, it adds, should only be opened in the areas with “the greatest need”. 

Related stories:

Ofsted has ‘lost credibility’ with teachers and must improve quality of inspections, union claims - 14 April, 2014 

Ofsted inspections are unreliable and too often based on data, watchdog admits - 9 January, 2015