Ofsted Inspections

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many pupils in England attended schools in 2005/06 deemed (a) inadequate and (b) satisfactory by HM Chief Inspector of Schools. (106934)

2,098,828 pupils attended the 5,996 schools which were inspected by Ofsted during the 2005/06 academic year. The following table shows these pupil numbers broken down by the judgment Ofsted made of each school:

Maintained primary, secondary, all special schools, city technology colleges, academies and pupil referral units: number of schools and pupils by Ofsted standards judgment made during the 2005/06 academic year
Ofsted judgment	Number of schools	¹Headcount of pupils
1 (Outstanding)	596	228,221
2 (Good)	2,866	925,830
3 (Satisfactory)	2,050	737,152
4 (Inadequate)	484	207,625
¹Pupil numbers are derived from School Census returns, and are as at January 2006

The Government have had considerable success in reducing school failure: in 1998, there were 524 schools in special measures, and by the end of the 2005/06 academic year, there were 208. We are committed to further reducing the numbers of failing and underperforming schools. The Education and Inspection Act contains measures to give local authorities additional powers to tackle underperformance, to ensure that fewer schools become a cause for concern, and to enable local authorities to turn around more quickly those schools which do get into difficulties.

Volume 454: debated on Tuesday 5 December 2006