🏫 Ofsted Inspection Changes 2025: What Schools Need to Know
Starting November 10, 2025, Ofsted will implement significant changes to its inspection processes for maintained schools and academies in England. These reforms aim to provide a more comprehensive and nuanced assessment of educational quality, moving beyond traditional headline judgments.
📊 1. Report Cards with a 5-Point Grading Scale
Ofsted is introducing a new report card format that includes:
- Safeguarding evaluated on a ‘met’ / ‘not met’ scale.
- A 5-point grading scale for evaluation areas other than safeguarding.
- A short narrative explaining the rationale behind each grade.
- Contextual data about the school to support more nuanced reporting.
This approach replaces the previous single headline judgment, offering a more detailed picture of a school's performance.
🧭 2. The Evaluation Areas Graded on Inspection
The evaluation areas for all schools are:
- safeguarding
- inclusion
- curriculum and teaching
- achievement
- attendance and behaviour
- personal development and well-being
- early years in schools (where applicable)
- sixth form in schools (where applicable)
- leadership and governance
🌟 3. The Evaluation Scale used for Inspection
Each evaluation area will be graded on a 5-point scale. The evaluation scale for each evaluation area, other than safeguarding, is:
- Exceptional (highest quality provision): an evaluation area can be graded ‘exceptional’ when all the strong standards have been met and if it meets all the additional standards in the ‘exceptional’ section of the toolkit.
- Strong standard: an evaluation area can be graded ‘strong standard’ when all the expected standards and all the strong standards have been met.
- Expected standard: an evaluation area can be graded ‘expected standard’ when all the standards are met – this includes meeting the legal requirements and the expectations set out in statutory guidance, as well as the professional standards required of the particular type of provision, where these apply.
- Needs attention: an evaluation area can be graded ‘needs attention’ when the ‘expected standard’ has not been met because some aspects of provision are inconsistent, limited in scope or impact and/or not fully meeting the legal requirements.
- Urgent improvement (lowest quality provision): an evaluation area can be graded ‘urgent improvement’ when it needs urgent action to provide a suitable standard of education and/or care for children and learners.
Safeguarding will be evaluated separately on a ‘met’ / ‘not met’ scale, NOT on the 5-point grading scale.
🌍 4. Emphasis on Inclusion
A key focus of the 2025 reforms is the inclusion of disadvantaged groups. A standalone "Inclusion" area will assess how schools support:
- socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils (those eligible for the pupil premium)
- pupils with SEND; this means pupils receiving special educational needs (SEN) support, and those with an education, health and care (EHC) plan
- pupils who are known (or previously known) to children’s social care, such as children in need and looked-after children
- pupils who may face other barriers to their learning and/or well-being, which may include pupils who share a protected characteristic.
This area will be prominently featured across other evaluation areas as well.
📅 5. Implementation Timeline
- November 10, 2025: Reforms take effect for early years, state-funded schools, and further education and skills inspections.
- January 2026: Inspections under the renewed framework commence for initial teacher education and non-association independent schools.
Note that there will be no routine inspections of state-maintained schools and further education and skills providers in the first half of the autumn term, as the previous cycle of inspections was completed in July.
📘 6. Updated Guidance Documents
To support these changes, Ofsted has released updated guidance documents:
- Education Inspection Framework for use from November 2025
- School Inspection Toolkit, Operating Guide, and Information
These documents provide detailed information on the new inspection processes and criteria.
For more information and to access the full guidance documents, visit the official GOV.UK website.
If you have questions about how these changes may affect your school, please ask!
Continue the Conversation
We run a 3 day Headteacher Inspection Training course. By attending this training Senior Leaders in primary age range schools will gain an understanding of the new framework, toolkit, report card, and training undertaken by inspectors which will enable you to plan for and manage an inspection within your setting.
We also run half termly Inspection Briefings to inform headteachers and deputy headteachers of the latest messages from Ofsted. These will be highly relevant and up-to-date, informed by the latest training for inspectors, as well as feedback and first-hand experience from schools that have recently been inspected.
You may be interested in our latest resource Creating your own Report Card
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