Education secretary in row with MPs over academy schools inspections

Nicky Morgan’s decision to block inspections of managers and sponsors labelled ‘absurd’ by fellow Tory MP Graham Stuart

The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has clashed with the members of the House of Commons education committee over her decision to block inspections of managers and sponsors of academy school chains, with the committee labelling Morgan’s decision “absurd”.

During a heated exchange, Graham Stuart, the Conservative MP who chairs the education committee, mocked Morgan’s refusal to allow Ofsted inspectors to question the central leadership of academy chains, the sponsors that administer an increasingly large proportion of schools in England.

“It’s absurd. It would be like trying to judge an army by only talking to people at the front line, and not having a meeting with the generals in charge,” Stuart told Morgan as she gave evidence to the committee.

“If you don’t go and look at the control centre you’re struggling to understand what’s really happening.”

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted and chief inspector of schools, has repeatedly said that the regulator should be given additional powers to inspect and grade the management of academy chains, as it already does with local authorities.

Michael Gove, the former education secretary, refused to grant the extra powers, but last week Wilshaw said he felt he was winning the argument in his discussions with the Department for Education.

Morgan’s response to the education committee members suggested that she and Wilshaw differed, with Morgan telling MPs that Ofsted’s powers to inspect individual schools was sufficient.

“I’m not entirely sure that visiting the head office is actually going to yield more than going and talking to the people who are actually running the chains,” Morgan said.

Stuart responded: “You’re kidding me. If you wanted to know what was going on at Shell you’d be quite happy to be told: no, don’t go to the head office, just go around and visit their refineries?”

“That’s not how I would audit Shell. I’d want to get right into the heart of the headquarters and I’d want to get right to the heart of finding out who’s running the organisation.”

Morgan maintained that “going to look at an office is not actually going to help”, prompting a withering reply from Stuart: “That’s a bit trite, isn’t it? It’s not the office, it’s the people. Trying to find out who runs the organisation.”

The pair then jousted over Morgan’s discussions with Wilshaw. “I’ve had one conversation where we have discussed it,” Morgan said, before Stuart cut her off: “Did you do any listening? I’m sorry to be so rude,” he said.

Pointing out that Ofsted could inspect local authority management but not academy chain management, Stuart told Morgan: “I just think that it is an indefensible position and you haven’t managed to convey to us in any way what would be lost by letting [Ofsted] go and do an inspection of an increasingly important component of British education, which is these academy trusts.”

In March the DfE barred 14 academy chains from taking over new schools because of financial or management concerns. Last month Ofsted conducted an inspection of 12 schools in the AET chain, and found that half the schools were performing poorly.

The committee also questioned Morgan over extremism as seen in schools in Birmingham during the recent Trojan horse affair. Morgan revealed that two teachers in the city had received interim prohibition orders – banning them from classrooms – as part of a disciplinary process. There were other teachers whose conducted was still being investigated, she said.

The education secretary said that there was no evidence of extremism on a similar scale to Birmingham. “There are sometimes individual schools where issues have been raised,” she said.

“Ofsted have been into Tower Hamlets … they inspected them in September and they found that there were no matters that required further measures,” Morgan said.

Morgan said that rapid progress was being made in reforming the Birmingham schools at the centre of the controversy, despite comments by Wilshaw earlier this week that little had been done.

Pat Glass, the Labour MP for North West Durham, told Morgan that she had seen letters from Birmingham city council to the DfE raising concerns about some of the schools involved dating back to 2010.

Tweet