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Education and Inspections Bill

The hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not go into hypothetical situations. The whole point is that the local authority can refer and the schools adjudicator will make the decision. That is a very important safeguard. Fourthly, trust members and proposed trustees must not be involved in activities that may be considered inappropriate for children and young people—for example, those associated with tobacco, gambling, adult entertainment and alcohol—or that could bring the school into disrepute. Fifthly, regulations will disqualify specific categories of people from being trustees. In addition, the Secretary of State will have a reserve power to remove and to appoint individual trustees. Sixth in this list of safeguards is the fact that trust schools will remain local authority maintained schools, with the budget delegated to the governing body, not to the trust. The trust’s functions will be to appoint governors to the school and to hold assets on trust for the school. The Bill will place new protections around the disposal of assets held by foundations. I am adding a seventh safeguard: I confirm for those hon. Members who have raised the matter with me that trust schools will be inspected by Ofsted in the same way as other publicly funded schools. Ofsted will introduce a number of changes to school inspection to capture the contribution of trusts to their schools. It will add specific references to trusts in the self-evaluation form—the basis on which the new school inspections will be undertaken. The changes will require trust schools to identify their status and to describe their distinctive aims and special features. Inspectors would use that information as the starting point in assessing a trust’s contribution to the school’s overall performance. The framework for school inspection already provides opportunity for inspectors to examine and to comment on a trust’s impact on the leadership and management of a school, and thereby on all other aspects of the school’s work. However, to make that explicit, Ofsted will amend the guidance on conducting the inspection to include a requirement for inspectors to assess the impact of governors appointed by a trust on the school’s work.