Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), the company the former Isle of Wight council administration gave two Island secondary schools to run, has been heavily criticised in an Ofsted report on the whole organisation.
AET runs a large number of Academies across England. On the Island they’re are responsible for secondary schools Ryde and Sandown, as well as primary, Weston Community Primary School.
In the letter from Ofsted’s Chief Operating Officer to the Chief Exec, the Government inspector says, “too many pupils in the Trust are not receiving a good enough education.”
In the summary of strengths and weaknesses it states:
AET has not provided effective support to all its academies. The rapid expansion of the Trust and a lack of strategic leadership have hindered improvement. Overall, some academy leaders are sceptical that the Trust will be able to help them improve to a good or excellent standard.
A survey of the leaders of some of AET’s schools across England (which included an IW one) was triggered by a report in May on AET which found:
- AET academies were not improving quickly enough, with too many continuing to be less than good
- the progress of pupils, as measured by value-added scores, was below the national level between Key Stages 1 and 2 and between Key Stages 2 and 4
- disadvantaged pupils in the Trust were well behind their more affluent peers and less likely to achieve 5 good GCSEs, including English and mathematics, than was the case nationally for all disadvantaged pupils
- with eleven academies judged inadequate, the Trust faced a substantial challenge in raising the performance of its academies. Apart from its central resources, the Trust had only four outstanding academies to draw on for expertise, and three of these are clustered in one corner of the country
- around half of all academies inspected by May 2014 were less than good, a picture that had hardly improved since our December 2013 inspections when six of your academies were judged inadequate.
The letter
