Almost a third of investigations conducted when a child is seriously hurt or dies due to abuse is inadequate, Ofsted said yesterday.

Publishing its annual report, the education watchdog said the standard of children’s services provided by one in three councils was not good enough and criticised well-performing authorities for harbouring pockets of under-performance.

Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said there remained much to do to improve councils’ work in safeguarding children and accused town hall leaders who attacked her inspection regime of speaking up for “vested interests” rather than for children.

Although cases of deaths or serious harm to children remained stable last year, at 414, the number of serious case reviews surged after the controversy over the death of Baby Peter in Haringey in 2007 despite repeated visits by social workers.

Ofsted checked 199 serious case reviews last year, more than double the number it reviewed a year earlier. It found 56 to be of good quality, 86 adequate and 57 inadequate. None was outstanding. Poor record-keeping, a failure to identify and report abuse and accepting the explanation of parents rather than considering complaints from the child’s perspective, were common problems identified.

Standards in schools continued to improve last year, with 19 per cent outstanding and 50 per cent good, but 28 only satisfactory and 4 per cent inadequate. Poor teaching remained a problem in too many schools.

Last year 121 schools were placed in special measures and another 149 were served with notices to improve — between them offering a poor education to 150,000 children, although this was an improvement on the previous year when 471 schools were in one of the two categories.

“There is a stubborn core of inadequate teaching and teaching that is only satisfactory: teaching that fails to inspire, challenge or extend children and learners,” Ms Gilbert said.

Of 30 academies inspected by Ofsted last year five were judged inadequate and another eight rated only satisfactory. Two of the five that failed inspections have been placed in special measures and all faced a challenge to raise standards, she said.

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