An MP has joined the battle to abolish the school inspection service Ofsted.
Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton North East) said inspectors were failing to raise standards - because ten years after Ofsted began, too many schools were still sub-standard.
But the service was costing taxpayers £208 million a year, he said.
The MP has asked colleagues to back his campaign by signing a House of Commons motion calling for councils to take over responsibility for school inspections.
Ofsted has been controversial since it was founded. Many teachers hoped Labour would abolish it, but instead the Government has supported inspections.
Tim Brighouse, Birmingham's former chief education officer, conducted a long-running campaign against Ofsted, and once accused it of organising a "reign of terror".
More recently, it has come under attack from headteachers including Jane Hattatt, of Lords-wood Girls' School, Harborne, who discovered sections of an inspection report about her school had been lifted from a report on a school in Bradford, Yorkshire.
Mr Purchase said he backed the extra money going into education but said he was "dismayed to learn that one in eight school-age children are being taught inadequately".
Ofsted had "allowed this situation to develop" during the ten years it had been operating, he said.
