Ofsted report lambasts 'limited leadership' in Oasis academy chain
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Version 0 of 1. The Oasis academy chain has received a strong rebuke from Ofsted inspectors for its inability to help struggling schools and confusion within senior management – at an embarrassing time for the government, which plans to push more maintained schools into academy chains. In its first focused inspection of a single academy chain, Ofsted said it found “limited leadership capacity within the trust”, and painted a picture of “inadequate communication” and “potential confusion” between regional staff and the trust’s central management. Ofsted inspectors made visits to 10 primary and secondary academies run by Oasis Community Learning (Oasis academy Aspinal in Manchester, Coulsdon and Johanna in London, Hobmoor and Boulton in Birmingham, Isle of Sheppey in Kent, Skinner Street in Gillingham, Longmeadow in Wiltshire, Mayfield in Southampton and MediaCityUK in Salford), with only four being rated as good. It also interviewed the heads of 20 other academies and senior staff at the chain’s headquarters. One of the schools visited, Oasis academy Skinner Street, was rated as inadequate and placed in special measures by inspectors, who said the school’s management “have an unrealistic view of how well the academy is performing”. The examination comes as the government prepares to pass legislation aimed at turning maintained schools into academies in greater numbers, with David Cameron claiming recently that turning struggling schools into academies was a sure route to improvement. We have serious concerns about the methodology used in the report The Ofsted report, set out as a letter to Oasis chief executive John Murphy, said: “The trust’s academies have a variable record of improvement. While some have improved or sustained effective performance, too many academies have not improved quickly enough. “A legacy of weak challenge and insufficiently systematic or rigorous improvement work has resulted in slow or little improvement for nearly half the academies.” The chain runs 44 academies, making it one of the largest of its type. Of its 32 schools that have been inspected by Ofsted, 17 are rated as requiring improvement or inadequate, while only two are rated as outstanding – Ofsted’s highest grade. A spokesman for Oasis said that, while it had already identified many of the shortcomings and issues raised, it questioned whether Ofsted had conducted its evaluation properly. “We have serious concerns about the methodology used in the report. At the same time that our national office was inspected, 10 of our academies were subject to batch inspection. The results of 90% of these inspections were incredibly positive. “The secretary of state [for education, Nicky Morgan] has explicitly stated that multi-academy trust inspections should be rooted in the performance of individual academies during Ofsted inspections. We have serious questions as to whether this report truly reflects this,” the spokesman said. Ofsted said it was worrying that disadvantaged pupils – particularly boys – made significantly less progress in Oasis schools than their peers nationally. “Although in some academies this gap is closing, in too many it is not, and overall it remains a concern,” Ofsted said. “The trust’s leaders have prioritised specific areas of improvement, including the poor achievement of disadvantaged boys. However, there is no evidence of an overall strategy or plan that focuses on these particular issues,” it concluded. Reports designed to inform central management of problems “lack detailed analysis, are not evaluative and do not identify precise areas for improvement. In addition, they do not make it clear when and how any improvement points will be reviewed”. |