Ofsted Inspections

Anne Main
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.

Jim Knight
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:

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|Ofsted judgment                                                                   |Number of schools|1Headcount of pupils|
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|1 (Outstanding)                                                                   |596              |228,221             |
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|2 (Good)                                                                          |2,866            |925,830             |
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|3 (Satisfactory)                                                                  |2,050            |737,152             |
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|4 (Inadequate)                                                                    |484              |207,625             |
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|1 Pupil numbers are derived from School Census returns, and are as at January 2006|                 |                    |
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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.