Spending watchdog to question officials on school accountability

The Permanent Secretary for the Department for Education Chris Wormald, Ofsted’s chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw and Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, are due to face MPs today.

The hearing is expected to examine the role of the Department for Education (DfE) in intervening in failing schools and to explore how much oversight it has into the thousands of autonomous academies it has created.

Sir Michael Wilshaw is giving evidence following recent controversy over whether Ofsted should be allowed to inspect academy chains. Chains or multi-academy trusts are an increasingly important part of the education system and can be responsible for running large groups of academies – which are state funded schools run outside of local council control.

Sir Michael has repeatedly said that the inspection watchdog does not have the powers to inspect the head offices of academy chains but can look at the role of the sponsor when it inspects individual schools.

This is in contrast to local councils which do have their school improvement work directly inspected by Ofsted which then delivers a judgement about the authority.

At an education select committee hearing last month Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said she was satisfied that Ofsted already had enough powers to inspect academy chains, when it looks at their individual schools.

The Public Accounts Committee chairman Margaret Hodge has recently questioned the DfE’s ability to monitor how academies spend their money – in particular in transactions where a school does business with a firm connected to one of its own trustees or governors.

DfE rules state that ‘related party’ transactions are allowed but must be done at cost.

However Ms Hodge said she had little confidence in the DfE being able to know “if academies are complying with its new guidance on dealing with related party transactions”.