Commentary Part 1: School Inspections and Other Inspections by School Inspectors Chapter 5 – Schools Causing Concern Section 44: Categories of schools causing concern
83.This section defines the two statutory categories of schools causing concern: those which require special measures and those which require significant improvement.
84.Subsection (1) provides a revised definition of the existing special measures category, with a school’s capacity to improve now to be taken into account in inspectors’ judgements. The definition in section 13(9) of SIA 1996 is that ‘special measures are required to be taken in relation to a school if the school is failing, or likely to fail, to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education’. Schools will no longer be regarded as requiring special measures merely because they are ‘likely to fail’. Special measures will be required only if the school is failing to provide an acceptable standard of education and the capacity to secure the necessary improvement is not demonstrated.
85.Subsection (2) introduces a new category of a school requiring significant improvement. Schools which would previously have been judged to have serious weaknesses, as defined in section 15 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, inadequate sixth forms, as defined in paragraph 1(2) of Schedule 7 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, or to be underachieving, as defined in Ofsted guidance, are expected to fall into this new category.