Ofsted will “avoid” inspecting education settings that are disrupted by RAAC this term, but only if the provider is on the government’s list of settings with confirmed cases of the crumbly concrete.
The inspectorate last week said it would consider requests from affected schools and colleges under its deferral policy “as an exceptional circumstance”.
But Ofsted has now changed its approach in a statement issued today.
So far 146 schools and one college have been named by the Department for Education as having confirmed RAAC, but this number is expected to increase when the list is updated next week.
“This term we will avoid inspecting any education setting that is on the Department for Education’s published list of education settings affected by RAAC,” the watchdog said.
“These settings will be removed from our scheduling and will not be selected for inspection during the term.”
Ofsted acknowledged “some settings are not on the list, but are still impacted by RAAC in some way – for example, hosting pupils from schools that have RAAC”.
The inspectorate said it had “updated our deferrals guidance to make clear that we will consider disruption as a result of measures taken to deal with RAAC, when looking at inspection deferral”.
These measures “will be kept under review”.
However, if Ofsted has “concerns” about an education setting then it “may continue to carry out an inspection, in line with our current policy, regardless of their situation with RAAC”.
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