Ofsted’s annual report, due out later today, will launch a scathing attack on those responsible for underperforming schools. But rather than taking aim at the teachers or the schools, it’s the local authorities that the watchdog has got set in its sights. The report will say that there is too wide a gap in standards between different councils.
Chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw told the Today programme this morning:
‘There are not only differences between local authorities, there are differences between local authorities with similar demographics, and we will be looking very carefully at what is happening in those local authorities with the same sort of population, same levels of deprivation, similar numbers of children on free school meals where one particular local authority does extremely well, and another one doesn’t.’
The teaching unions are inevitably rather upset by this, arguing that the government will use ‘naming and shaming’ to force local authorities to convert schools to academies instead.
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