THE new head of Ofsted ran a chain of schools that get “good” and “outstanding” results — but do so with a worryingly high number of pupil exclusions.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan made Sir Martyn Oliver “His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools” — the head of schools’ regulator Ofsted — last month.

Keegan appointed Oliver because he was the longstanding boss of Outward Grange Academies Trust (OGAT), which runs 41 secondary and primary schools in north-east England and the Midlands. As Ofsted boss, he will be able to punish or praise schools, so he will have a big effect on school policy.

Most of OGAT’s schools are marked “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted — which Keegan says justifies the appointment.

But OGAT has long been criticised for getting good results at the cost of some of the most vulnerable pupils. Their schools often have high exclusion rates and poor attendance rates for disadvantaged pupils; the schools will seem to perform better if the most troubled kids aren’t in class.

Academy Trusts act like Local Education Authorities (LEAs), except unlike LEAs they are not under any real democratic control. Instead, they are run by boards of local businessmen and cronies.

The trusts themselves don’t really answer to local parents. Their schools are inspected by Ofsted, and — infrequently — Ofsted inspects the trusts themselves.

The last Ofsted inspection on Oliver’s academy trust as a whole was written back in 2019. Ofsted mostly praised Oliver and OGAT, but it also noted that “the proportion of pupils being excluded for a fixed period remains high across secondary schools.” It also said that the “absence and persistent absence of disadvantaged pupils and secondary-age pupils remain too high.”

Oliver told MPs looking at his Ofsted appointment that exclusion rates in his schools were “lower than most” in the areas they work. But analysis by leading education publication Schools Week found this wasn’t true.

It looked at permanent exclusions and found OGAT secondary schools excluded twice as many pupils as other schools in some of their regions. In north-east England, OGAT’s seven secondaries had a 0.64 permanent exclusion rate, compared to 0.30 in non-OGAT ones.

This means OGAT permanently excluded 6.4 per 1,000 pupils compared to 3 per 1,000 elsewhere. Schools Week calculated that OGAT’s overall permanent exclusion rate was about twice the national average. On top of this OGAT is known for high “fixed term” exclusions and suspensions.

While most OGAT schools get good marks, Ofsted is currently threatening to take one, a 900-pupil secondary in Middlesbrough called Outwood Academy Ormesby, away from the Trust.

Ofsted marked the school “inadequate,” in part because of the “high number of suspensions and exclusions.” Ofsted persuaded the school to introduce a “new behaviour policy” which is “focused on ensuring that pupils’ positive behaviour is recognised through rewards and praise.” This means “the number of suspensions is falling” — but possibly not enough for OGAT to keep the school.

Making Oliver Ofsted chief, a man who ran schools with high exclusion rates, might fit in with disciplinarian Tory policies. But these policies might be ensuring schools look “good” or “outstanding” because they are too keen to kick out the “difficult” kids instead of trying to win them around.

Oliver is otherwise happy to back up reactionary Tory policies. He was a commissioner for the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities — a member of the Tory-stuffed board that produced the widely criticised report that tried to play down “structural racism.”

Oliver’s role at OGAT really shows how education has been taken away from local democratic control. OGAT is a giant, with 41 schools, 1,500 teachers and £190 million income, which is entirely from the public sector.

But there is no local democratic influence: their self-selecting board decides direction, under the influence of the national government and Ofsted. As more and more schools are pushed into the “academy” system, a US-inspired form of semi-privatisation, we are losing any public control. With Ofsted now run by a “friend” of the government drawn from academy management, the system is being made into a closed, self-supporting one.

Oliver is paid £185,000 a year to run OGAT; his salary is so high that he will actually take a pay cut down to £165,000 to run Ofsted.

LetterOne: neither party is shy of accepting ‘oligarch money’

Labour was — rightly — quick to criticise Brandon Lewis MP, the former chair of the Conservative Party when he took a second job advising a company set up and significantly owned by two sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

Lewis will join investment firm LetterOne, founded by billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven. These oligarchs set up LetterOne to invest some of the money they made in Russia — LetterOne investments include owning high street health food firm Holland & Barrett.

The two oligarchs, who own 49 per cent of LetterOne, are sanctioned, so the current management of LetterOne won’t pay any dividends or other money to its oligarch owners, or take any instruction from them — but they are arguably stewarding the oligarch’s assets until the sanctions end.

Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds said it was “totally unacceptable” for Lewis to join a firm “owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs.” Dodds said: “It makes yet another mockery of Rishi Sunak’s promise of professionalism, integrity and accountability at all levels.”

But these principles look very flexible. LetterOne is run by Lord Mervyn Davies, a former Labour Party minister. Davies now sits in the Lords as a non-Labour independent. But in November 2021, his wife, Jeanne Marie Davies, gave £25,000 to David Lammy to be used “towards paying for an additional member of staff for my office.”

If Lewis shouldn’t take work from LetterOne because of the firm’s Russian oligarch links, it is hard to see how Labour’s shadow foreign secretary can have his staff funded by the wife of LetterOne’s chairman.

For good measure, Lammy has also attacked the Tories for being “just as hooked on Russian-linked money as any of the worm-tongued servicers of oligarchical wealth.”

Given his office was also partly run on “Russian-linked money,” you may think that this makes him one of those “worm-tongued servicers of oligarchical wealth” as well.

Follow Solomon on X @solhugheswriter.