JUST this week the Confederation of School Trusts, a powerful body representing most academies in Britain, issued a paper asking for a comprehensive review of the Ofsted inspection system — a review that proposed a weakening of Ofsted oversight and accountability for academy trusts.

Powerful trusts have merged, and they are starting to flex their muscles financially and politically. Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) were exempt from Ofsted inspection for many years, but due to various scandals about quality, transparency and accountability, this was reversed in 2016. Now, however, the favoured child of the Ofsted inspection system is, like Frankenstein’s monster, starting to exert control over its creator.

To set some context to this, Ofsted is controlled by a Tory government that believes, without a shred of evidence, that MATs are the route to school improvement. Ofsted arrives at schools with this prejudicial agenda. Non-academised schools are often judged harshly by Ofsted and then forced into academy trusts.

In 2019 Yew Tree Primary in Walsall was judged inadequate by Ofsted, and a forced academisation order was issued by the Department for Education. Despite significant school improvement in 2021, they had to fight a High Court battle to overturn the Secretary of State’s drive to academise them.

In their paper this week the Confederation of School Trusts list seven main demands. First and foremost is a call to scrap grades for all but “schools causing concern.” By evading Ofsted grades they can use the presumption of quality given to them as “insulation” from criticism and oversight.

The word insulate is used several times in the paper. Insulated MATs can then stand by happily and watch Ofsted focus their harshest judgements on schools resisting academisation. MATs can wait in the wings to scoop up schools when they are judged to be Grade 3 or Grade 4 by Ofsted.

Other parts of the paper call for changes in how exam results condition the outcomes of inspection reports, and it calls into question the reliability and challengeability of Ofsted gradings. All of these could be interpreted as specious ways for MATs to resist criticism, offload underperformers, game the exams system and use a substratum of non-academised schools as “sinks” to offload their troublesome pupils or low academic achievers.

MATs represent nothing less than monopolisation of the education “market.” Like all monopolies, they can now lobby the government to insulate themselves from critical judgement, departmental “interference,” and most chillingly, from democratic control.

MATs are often tied to big business. If big business dislikes democracy, it detests regulation. Some like Thomas Telford are using wealth management companies to play the money markets, in what is fast becoming a new publicly funded racket for the casino finance sector.

Schools Week reported on March 1 2023 that “the Thomas Telford School has the highest reserves of any individual academy at £9.44 million. It is sponsored by the Mercers’ Company, a former guild of London merchants now engaged in philanthropy, and building supplies firm Tarmac Holdings.”

MATs account for 78 per cent of secondary schools in England and 37 per cent of primaries. A monopoly on education is starting to develop. It appears that larger MATs are starting to leave local authority schools and smaller academy chains behind, paving the way for mergers and acquisitions.

One of the most hypocritical things about monopolies is their propaganda about a “free market.” Monopoly markets are never free. They wipe out competition and resist all attempts at regulation. People have suffered from deregulated catastrophes for decades: in rail disasters like Hatfield, fires like Grenfell Tower, banking collapses, and cost of living crises. As users of a diminishingly state-owned education system, we are left to ponder what future horrors lie in wait for parents and children.

Steve Handford is a secondary teacher working in SEMH schools in the north-east of England.