What has ditching overall Ofsted grades actually changed?

Two years ago a newly elected Labour government announced that it was scrapping single-word Ofsted judgements with immediate effect.

Coming after the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life after an inspection, the decision felt like a significant moment.

Ofsted has since moved to a new report card inspection framework, which was launched last November.

But two years on from the decision to ditch single-word grades - and nearly a year into the new inspection regime - has the move resulted in meaningful change for schools?

Leaders tell Tes that the high-stakes nature of inspection remains the same, while some of Ofsted’s changes have actually worsened their workload and the pressure they are under.

Getting rid of Ofsted single-word judgements

After Ofsted dropped its four overall effectiveness judgements (“outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” and “inadequate”) in September 2024, it inspected under the same framework for a year, without giving schools an overall grade.

Last November the inspectorate then introduced its new inspection framework based on report cards, under which schools are graded in at least six evaluation areas using a five-point scale ranging from “exceptional” to “urgent improvement”.

The change was “about acknowledging the complexity of what goes in schools, and recognising that all schools will have areas they do well in and some they can improve on - and that can get lost with a single-word summary”, according to Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts.

But David Clayton, CEO of Endeavour Learning Trust, argues that the sector still has single-word judgements. “It is just that we now have several single-word judgements rather than one,” he says. “I don’t think this is any more coherent, less confusing or less stressful for people.”

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, believes that scrapping single-phrase judgements was “long overdue and badly needed”.

These descriptors, he warns, “were such a blunt and reductive way of assessing a school”, and “placed a huge amount of weight on that judgement, creating an exceptionally high-stakes culture and stigmatising schools which received a negative rating”.

However, he questions whether Ofsted has simply replaced one bad system with another, having “rushed into” report card inspections.

Headline grades ‘haven’t gone’

When the plan for the current inspection framework was first announced, Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver told Tes that one of the challenges with report cards would be communicating the idea that schools could be more than one thing at once.

But how much of that detail and nuance is actually cutting through?

With at least six headline grades to choose from, there had been a concern that schools might cherry-pick their successes when presenting a report to their community.

To counter this, Ofsted asked schools to include a QR code linking to their full report on any banners or promotional materials that refer to findings from their inspections.

But unsurprisingly, particularly in an era of falling pupil rolls, schools are still eager to celebrate successful inspections. And no sooner had the first report cards been published, then posts started to appear on social media platforms from schools branding themselves as “exceptional” schools.

Cathie Paine, CEO of REAch2, the country’s largest all-primary trust, warns there is a risk of “recreating exactly the high-stakes culture that removing the single-word grade was designed to change”.

As well as schools highlighting where they have received “exceptional” across the board, Tes has seen multiple examples of schools and local media homing in on an “exceptional” judgement in one category - even where several other areas were ranked lower.

“The new report cards were introduced to give parents a richer, more balanced picture of a school’s strengths and where it is still improving, not simply to replace one headline judgement with another,” says Paine. “If we’ve learned anything, surely it’s that we must guard against recreating the very culture we have worked so hard to move away from.”

In a Teacher Tapp survey of more than 1,600 teachers, shared exclusively with Tes, the biggest proportion of respondents - 37 per cent of those in primaries and 27 per cent of those in secondaries - said their schools were using the exact, “unsimplified” wording from Ofsted reports, when communicating inspection outcomes to parents.

The next most common response was to list individual category ratings, with no overall summary.

How outcomes are being used

Without overall grades, comparing schools, and grouping them together, has become more complex.

But Di’Iasio sees a “clear risk” that the results could still be used to create league tables by adding up results across each evaluation area and creating a “score” for each school, placing schools “under even more pressure”.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education is still using Ofsted inspection findings as a trigger for intervention measures.

Unlike previously, however, so-called “stuck” schools needing intervention are now supported by Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) officers, rather than potentially facing being instantly academised or rebrokered into a different trust.

This may have helped to lower the stakes of inspections in one sense.

However, there appears to be an increased chance of schools facing return monitoring visits, which are now triggered by just one “needs attention” grade in any of the six evaluation areas. Under the previous framework, schools would be subject to monitoring if they got an overall rating of less than “good”.

A Tes investigation earlier this year showed that some 37 per cent of schools inspected by Ofsted in 2025-26 faced a monitoring inspection over an area of concern found by inspectors.

This is more than twice the proportion of schools that triggered monitoring visits in the last full year of graded inspections under the previous inspection framework.

Jonny Uttley, a former MAT CEO and education consultant, says: “One ‘needs attention’ grade feels like receiving the old overall ‘requires improvement’ judgement - but now the risk of that grade sits across at least six different evaluation areas.

“This does nothing to reduce the pressure on leaders, and, speaking to people, it really does feel horrible out there.”

Has the pressure worsened?

A spokesperson for Ofsted says it has heard from “many school leaders that inspection now feels much more collaborative and constructive, and that’s very encouraging”.

The inspectorate has also commissioned rigorous, independent research, which it says will give a “true and impartial picture of how our reforms are landing”.

“Parents seem to be getting to grips with the new-style reports, and local media are accurately reporting the richer picture that report cards give of strengths and areas for improvement,” the inspectorate adds.

But there are concerns that having an increased number of grades, coupled with Ofsted’s “secure-fit” approach - meaning every descriptor in a grade category has to be hit - is actually driving up workload and stress for leaders.

Di’Iasio says inspectors are now expected to make judgements across up to nine areas in two days, “all of which are high-stakes verdicts on the school’s performance”.

“That makes the inspection a very intense business, and leaders often use words such as ‘brutal’ and ‘gruelling’ to describe their experience,” he adds.

The inspectors’ check-in on leader wellbeing is welcome but “often seen as perfunctory”, Di’Iasio cautions.

The support service Headrest, run by former school leaders, says it has experienced an increase in Ofsted-related calls during 2026. “We have seen a noticeable rise in calls where Ofsted inspection is either the central issue or a significant contributing factor to a school leader’s distress,” says charity member Peter Crockett.

The removal of the overall headline grade has not materially changed the perception of inspections as high-stakes events, “with significant consequences for leaders’ careers, health and wellbeing”, he adds.

Falling support

A poll carried out by Teacher Tapp and shared with Tes suggests that support among teachers for the new inspection system is now much lower than it was for the original concept of swapping an overall effectiveness grade for a report card approach.

In January 2025, when asked how they felt about replacing single-word judgements, more than half of respondents (56 per cent) were supportive.

This was after the government had announced that the system would be moving to report cards but before Ofsted had published its detailed plans or launched inspections.

More recently, Teacher Tapp again gauged teacher opinion on the new inspection regime, showing that now only around one in five support the move (21 per cent).

Achievement grade controversy

There has been particular concern about the new achievement category and Ofsted’s stipulation that, to achieve an “expected standard” grade, school results need to be broadly in line with the national average.

A Tes analysis in March of this year showed that schools with the highest proportion of disadvantaged students were almost three times as likely to be marked down on achievement as those with the lowest proportion.

Uttley says: “It really feels as if nothing has fundamentally changed. And where there has been a change, it has arguably been for the worse because it has felt there has been more of a focus on raw attainment this year without any real contextualising about the school.”

Ofsted is introducing similar schools data comparisons into the information considered by inspectors this year.

But these attempts have not convinced ASCL that Ofsted has gone far enough in recognising context, says Di’Iasio.

Powell wants supportive accountability

Ofsted inspections have been thrown into sharp focus again with the inspectorate facing criticism this week for not deferring the inspection of a small school earlier this year when its headteacher was absent receiving cancer treatment.

And Ms Perry’s sister, Julia Waters, told LBC radio that she had heard from 12 headteachers who had been left feeling suicidal after Ofsted inspections.

Speaking on LBC radio this week to address concerns, Lucy Powell said there was nothing more concerning to her as education secretary than “the idea that our accountability regime in this country would lead to a headteacher taking their own life”.

She added: “So I take incredibly seriously teacher, headteacher wellbeing and yes, of course, we need an accountability structure and regime to continue school improvement. But I want to see one that is much more kind of supportive and understanding of the great jobs that the majority of - in fact, almost all - headteachers are doing around the country, and support them with that.”

And many in the system believe that the real issue with Ofsted is about not just the inspection process but its outcomes and the pressure of a perceived cliff edge.

As one school leader, who asked to remain anonymous, puts it: “Getting rid of the single overall effectiveness judgement was a good step, but it was the first tiny step of a marathon that needed to be run.”