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24 Apr 2009 : Column 901W—continued
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, for a response.
Inspections of non-association independent schools are carried out under the inspection framework known as Section 162a.
Under this framework, there is no summary judgement for overall effectiveness, and independent schools, including special schools, are not categorised as outstanding, good, satisfactory or inadequate. Consequently, Ofsted does not hold the information for which you asked. It should also be noted that many of the pupils in independent special schools do not live in the area in which the school is situated and may well come from a wide area. This would affect any association with local area deprivation.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 16 April 2009:
Parliamentary Question Number 269796: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, how many and what percentage of maintained and non-maintained special schools judged as (a) outstanding, (b) good, (c) adequate and (d) inadequate at their last Ofsted inspection are in each decile of area deprivation.
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, for a response.
Table A shows the number of maintained special schools and non-maintained special schools inspected by Ofsted under the current inspection framework (commonly known as section 5), as well as their inspection outcomes. These have been allocated to ten bands according to the income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI) 2007 produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government, where 1 indicates the most deprived 10%, and 10 indicates the least deprived 10%. Table B shows the same figures expressed as percentages.
As of 2 March 2009, 984 maintained special schools and 73 non-maintained special schools were open in England. 958 of the maintained special schools and 70 of the non-maintained special schools have been inspected by Ofsted up to 31 December 2008, the latest inspection data available. The IDACI was used to allocate these schools into ten bands, based on their postcodes. The IDACI band of deprivation is not yet available for the postcode of one maintained special school and, therefore, this school, which was rated outstanding, has been excluded from the analysis. The information used to allocate postcodes to IDACI band of deprivation has been updated since my response to Parliamentary Question 264609. As a result, the number of good schools in the 10% most deprived areas has increased from 56 to 57.
Within the total number of inspected schools given above, two maintained special schools and one non-maintained special school were last inspected under the previous inspection framework (commonly known as section 10), in use before September 2005. The inspection outcomes and deprivation bands for these overall effectiveness judgement was made using a seven point scale: excellent, very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory, poor and very poor. It is not possible to operate a simple read-across approach from a seven- to a four-point scale. Ofsted's criteria for making inspection judgements about schools are clearly set out in our inspection guidance. Inspectors do not make reference to, or comparisons with, the previous inspection framework.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
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