The Education (School Inspection) Regulations 1997

Notification of inspection

5.—(1) Where an inspection is arranged, the appropriate authority shall, for the purpose of paragraph 6(a) of Schedule 3 to the 1996 Act, take such steps as are reasonably practicable to notify—

(a) in the case of a county, voluntary or maintained special school which has a delegated budget, a person appearing to them to be an appropriate officer of the local education authority;

(b) in the case of a county, voluntary or maintained special school which does not have a delegated budget, the chairman of the governing body;

(c) in the case of a grant-maintained or grant-maintained special school, the funding authority;

(d) in the case of a voluntary school or a grant-maintained school which, immediately before it became a grant-maintained school, was a voluntary school, the person who appoints the school’s foundation governors and, in the case of an aided or special agreement school, the appropriate diocesan authority (if different);

(e) in the case of a school in a group of grant-maintained schools in respect of which any person has power to appoint an externally appointed core governor under a provision of the instrument of government made in pursuance of Schedule 25 to the Education Act 1996(1); that person;

(f) in the case of an aided or grant-maintained secondary school the instrument of government of which names a person as a sponsor of the school, that person;

(g) in the case of a special school which is not maintained by a local education authority, or an independent school approved by the Secretary of State under section 347(1) of the Education Act 1996, the funding authority, a further education funding council or any local education authority, if that body are paying fees in respect of the provision of education to any person at the school;

(h) in the case of any school at which a registered pupil is a child who is looked after by the local authority, a person appearing to them to be an appropriate officer of that local authority; and

(i) in the case of a secondary school, the Training and Enterprise Council for the area in which the school is located, and such members of the local business community as the appropriate authority think fit, having regard, in particular, to the desirability of notifying members who employ or have recently employed former pupils of the school

of the time when the inspection is to take place.

(2) In this regulation—

(a) the expression “a school which has a delegated budget” has the meaning given to that expression in section 115(b) of the Education Act 1996;

(b) the expression “appropriate diocesan authority” means—

(i) in relation to a school in which the religious education provided is provided in accordance with the faith and practice of the Church of England, the Diocesan Board of Education for the diocese of the Church of England in which the school is situated; and

(ii) in relation to a school in which the religious education provided is provided in accordance with the faith and practice of the Roman Catholic Church, the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese in which the school is situated;

(c) the reference to a group of grant-maintained schools is a reference to a group of such schools conducted by a single governing body under Chapter IX of Part III of the Education Act 1996; and

(d) the expression “externally appointed core governor” has the meaning which that expression has in paragraph 2 of Schedule 25 to the Education Act 1996.

(1)

1996 c. 56.