119 failing academies have been removed from sponsors

119 academies have been removed from their sponsors and taken over by new trusts, England's schools commissioner Sir David Carter has said.

Speaking to the Commons Education Committee, alongside Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, Carter suggested some academies were performing no better than when they had initially been taken over for poor standards.

He also confirmed that only seven of the 973 functioning multi-academy trusts (MAT) had been inspected as part of ‘batched inspections’, which evaluate the standard of an entire academy chain due to concerns over standards.

Wilshaw gave a somewhat scathing attack on MATs, condemning a ‘Walmart philosophy’ among trusts that leads towards ‘empire building’ as opposed to improving standards.

The outgoing chief inspector said he would struggle to find more than half a dozen high performing academy chains and called for the development of a framework for inspecting the performance of MATs, similar to the framework for inspecting local authorities that are failing.

Carter responded by saying their was already sufficient knowledge in the system of what high performing MATs do and that he didn’t think a framework would ‘add to that’, but did stress that transparency in the system was vitally important.

Carter also agreed that expansion had sometimes happened too quickly in the past, but indicated he believed the situation had improved in recent years.