Secondary schools warned by Ofsted that progress has stalled

Secondary schools in England have been warned by Ofsted that they are not increasing standards fast enough, with almost a third of secondary schools rated as requiring improvement or inadequate.

Chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, delivering the education watchdog's annual report, says that secondary schools have "stalled". He says there are now 170,000 pupils in inadequate secondary schools, about 70,000 more than two years ago and these schools "need to concentrate on the basics".

The annual report, looking at the outcomes of inspections in 2013-14, says that the school system continues to improve, with more than four out of five schools now rated good or outstanding. Much of this progress has been driven by primary schools, with Ofsted saying there are 700,000 more pupils in good and outstanding primary schools than in 2012.

But Sir Michael warns that there are more worrying signs in secondary schools, with 50 more in special measures than last year. The rate of improvement has slowed and some have declined, with 71% of secondary schools rated as good or outstanding, compared with 82% of primary schools. It means that for secondary schools, 29% are rated as requiring improvement or inadequate.

He also warned the "transition from primary to secondary can be poor" and the "culture of underperforming schools is not good, with low-level disruption".

The Ofsted chief said more school autonomy needed to be accompanied by increased monitoring. He said that was one of the lessons of the so-called Trojan horse investigation in Birmingham, where schools rated outstanding were downgraded to inadequate.

In presenting the report, Sir Michael said he was also "increasingly concerned" about problems with recruiting teachers, particularly when there was a population surge. "This is a pressing issue. More teachers will be needed to match the substantial increase in the number of school-aged children expected over the next 10 years." If there were not enough teachers, he warned that the best schools would "cherry pick the best trainees", with the risk that this would widen the gap between strong and weak schools.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said "One of my tasks is going to be to make sure we see great leadership across the school system.”

"We have many excellent head teachers and now we want to see more of them working with schools that need the next boost to make sure that they are not failing their pupils."

Labour's shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said, "Whilst we have plenty of reasons to celebrate success in our school system, we can see stagnation across secondary school performance. The way to address this is equally clear: by raising the quality of teaching in every classroom, in every school."