Ofsted’s report cards: everything you need to know

The new school report cards will launch in November, with plans to scrap ungraded inspections and subject deep dives
3rd February 2025, 12:01am

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Ofsted’s report cards: everything you need to know

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ofsted-report-cards-school-inspection-everything-you-need-know
Ofsted’s report card: Everything you need to know

Ofsted is planning to inspect schools on a new five-point grading scale when it launches its report cards later this year.

In a consultation being launched today, the watchdog sets out 11 areas in which schools could receive a judgement after inspection.

Ofsted also says ungraded inspections will no longer take place and that subject deep dives are to be scrapped.

Under these plans, no inspections would take place for the first half-term of the next academic year, to allow for training to take place. Inspections would start in November.

The plans for Ofsted report cards

Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said the new report card will “replace the simplistic overall judgement with a suite of grades, giving parents much more detail and better identifying the strengths and areas for improvement for a school”.

Report card

 

However, headteachers’ leaders have warned that the plans for report cards are ”worse than single-word judgements” and will lead to teachers “voting with their feet” and leaving the profession.

The changes are supported by the Department for Education, which is providing Ofsted with £6.2 million for the development and delivery of the report card.

Over the next few months, Ofsted will assess, through visits to providers and external review processes, the impact of the proposed reforms on leaders’, practitioners’ and inspectors’ workloads, mental health and wellbeing.

Here is everything you need to know about Ofsted’s plans:

Up to 11 different judgement areas

Ofsted is proposing to inspect all schools across at least nine areas.

These are: achievement, behaviour and attitudes, leadership and governance, curriculum, developing teaching, personal development and wellbeing, attendance, inclusion and safeguarding. Where applicable, schools will also be rated on their sixth form and early years.

Under the plans, schools would be given one of five grades for each of these categories apart from safeguarding, for which there would be a binary judgement of either “met” or “not met”.

Tes previously revealed that teaching would be inspected as a separate category under the proposals, but Ofsted has been clear that it will not return to lesson observations.

The new inclusion criterion will assess schools on whether they are making a “tangible difference to pupils’ learning, development and wellbeing”, Ofsted says.


More on Ofsted’s new inspections:


Five-point grading, including ‘exemplary’

Ofsted is proposing a new five-point scale, ranging from “causing concern” at the lowest end, through “attention needed”, “secure” and “strong”, to the highest rating of “exemplary”.

The inspectorate says the grade “exemplary” would be given when a provider’s practice is of such exceptional quality that it should be shared with others across the country.

In these cases, inspectors would invite leaders to submit a short case study of the school’s work to the Ofsted Academy. The inspectorate proposes using a panel of experts to review these case studies nationally.

Ofsted says that a school could be rated as “exemplary” in an area if across all evaluation areas it is graded as at least “secure” and, within an evaluation area, it is consistently “strong”.

Schools causing concern

Although Ofsted is no longer giving schools overall single-word grades, under these proposals it would still place schools into one of two categories of concern.

If a school was graded as “causing concern” for leadership and had also been given this rating in at least one other area or had been rated as “not met” on safeguarding, then it would be placed in special measures.

If a school was only rated as “causing concern” for leadership, or if it had other areas rated as “causing concern” but its leadership had not been given this rating, Ofsted would categorise it as “needing significant improvement”. This would replace the term “serious weaknesses”.

Toolkits used to assess schools

As Tes revealed last year, Ofsted has been developing toolkits setting out how it will be judging schools across the different judgement areas.

Ofsted has also today published criteria that explain what inspectors will look for in each of the assessment categories.

Ofsted says inspectors would have “operating guides” and “specific training” to help them apply the toolkits to different types of provision.

Ungraded inspections and deep dives scrapped

Ofsted would no longer carry out ungraded school inspections from this autumn, if the proposals go ahead.

This means every inspection that a school receives would be a “full graded one”.

The inspectorate would also scrap the deep-dive methodology, which it says will give inspectors and providers “significantly greater flexibility”. Ofsted has been using deep dives into individual subjects to assess the curriculum under its current inspection framework.

Some inspectors told Ofsted that they had “challenges in gathering evidence through deep dives in some contexts within the time limitations of inspection”.

New inspections to launch in November

Ofsted has previously committed to launching report cards from September.

Today it announced that inspections under the new system would get underway from November.

In response to a question from Tes, Sir Martyn said: “It will give us unprecedented amounts of time, never seen before, where we can pause inspections throughout the whole of the first half-term of autumn and we can deliver incredible training to the system and to our inspectors with plenty of time.”

Ofsted will ask every school to nominate a senior member of staff to work closely with the inspector or inspection team to ensure leaders are fully included in the process.

Monitoring visits

Ofsted is also proposing that all schools with an identified need for improvement would receive monitoring calls and visits “to check that timely action is being taken to raise standards”.

This would include schools “causing concern” and schools with any evaluation area graded as “attention needed”.

Schools with a “requires improvement” judgement at their last inspection, or those that have any key judgements graded as “requiring improvement”, will also be subject to a monitoring inspection.

The inspectorate says that visits would focus “only on the areas that need attention” and try to help the school to “recognise where it is on the improvement journey”.

In cases where a school has only a small number of “attention needed” grades but has dropped to a “causing concern”, Ofsted would convert the monitoring inspection to a full inspection.

For those schools that require significant improvement, Ofsted would complete five monitoring inspections within 18 months, unless the issues had been resolved earlier. This would increase to six monitoring inspections within 24 months for schools that require special measures.

If the school remained “causing concern” or in special measures after these visits, Ofsted would only then conduct a full reinspection.

Ruth Perry still in Ofsted chief’s mind

Sir Martyn told a press briefing about the proposed inspection changes that the tragic death of headteacher Ruth Perry remains on his mind.

Ms Perry took her own life in January 2023 after an Ofsted inspection downgraded her school, Caversham Primary in Berkshire, from “outstanding” to “inadequate” based on safeguarding concerns.

A coroner later ruled that the Ofsted inspection had contributed to her death and warned in a report that future deaths would occur if the watchdog did not make changes.

“The tragic death has been on my mind ever since it happened, and as I started my post, and then as the coroner’s report came in, through to the actions that Ofsted undertook when we accepted in full all of those areas of concern,” Sir Martyn said.

Ofsted won’t prejudge outcome

When asked whether Ofsted could delay launching the report card if concerns were raised in the consultation and testing period, Sir Martyn did not rule out changing the timeline.

“That’s a hypothetical question to which I can’t give a hypothetical answer, but I can tell you that we are going to make sure that we meet the government standard for consultation,” the Ofsted chief said.

“If it materially changes, then you cannot proceed with a very significant material change without going through further consultation. At that point, I would be considering and telling the sector what we’ve heard as we respond to the consultation, and we’ll move from there.”

School profiles

The government is also today announcing plans to change how parents see information about schools, through new digital “school profiles”.

The DfE said this would involve a “comprehensive modernisation” of its existing online schools directory, “creating a one-stop-shop where parents can see key, up-to-date data around areas like attainment and attendance, as well as the school’s latest inspection report card”.  

These measures will provide for more transparency, the DfE said.

Ofsted plans strongly criticised by unions

Pepe Di’lasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Ofsted and the government appear to have learned nothing from the death of headteacher Ruth Perry and have instead devised an accountability system which will subject a beleaguered profession to yet more misery.”

He said that the proposals appeared to be “even worse than the single-word judgements they replace”, adding that “people will vote with their feet by leaving teaching, which will worsen an already severe recruitment and retention crisis”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “The proposals set out today for consultation suggest an inspectorate determined to hold on to a model of inspection that is long past its sell-by date.”

Mr Whiteman added that the union is “very concerned” about the consultation and urged Ofsted not to follow “arbitrary deadlines” without support from the sector.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “We are concerned that inspectors categorising 10 areas into five boxes in two days will exacerbate existing issues of inconsistency and unreliability.”

He added that Ofsted appeared incapable of introspection or change, warning: “This new consultation points only to continued disaster.”

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