Inspection Consultancy

 

Our experienced consultants can run a bespoke inspection INSET day in your school. Below, you will find a list of our most enquired and booked INSET days based on inspection in primary schools.  To view other areas where our consultants have run INSET days around or to learn more about our general INSET/consultancy options, click here.

 

Inspection and Self-Evaluation

We know how much school leaders value support around inspection and self-evaluation. Focus Education has been supporting schools in this way for 25 years. Like all our work, we tailor our approach to fit your needs.

Could include...

Pre-inspection
  • Testing out your self-evaluation and checking it is robust
  • Working with you to check your data and self-evaluation tell the same story
  • Checking that the quality of provision matches your self-evaluation
  • Validating the judgement you have made against the criteria
  • Giving you peace of mind
Post-inspection
  • Working with you to take the report further into manageable actions
  • Evaluating the impact of action on school improvement

Self-evaluation

& review
  • Leading a school review (in partnership with the leadership team)
  • Carrying out a completely external review
  • Evaluating the impact of school improvement work
  • Focusing on a specific area and producing a report, e.g., early years, the impact of EAL provision.
Training
  • Training for whole staff or staff groups on managing the inspection process to ensure the best outcomes for your school.

 

Headteacher Inspection Training (3 Day)

This three-day course will equip primary school leaders with the knowledge to enable you to prepare your school or academy for inspection from November 2025 onwards. 
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. 
(Note: If leaders of Special Schools wish to attend, just let us know and the course leader will include additional specific information relevant to Special School inspection.)

Learn how inspectors evaluate the evidence to secure a judgement, looking in-depth at:
•    Each section of the new report card 
•    How evidence is gathered
•    Implications for leaders at all levels to ensure they are best prepared

Over the three days, you will gain an understanding of the following:
•    The ‘big picture’ of the new inspection framework and the implications for self-evaluation
•    Feedback from the pilot inspections
•    The key messages from inspector training on how to implement the new framework in schools
•    How evidence will be evaluated by inspectors to inform the report card
•    The role of leaders, including governors, in the inspection process

    Self-Evaluation

    We know it can be challenging for school and academy leaders to ensure that all school team members understand the need for rigorous self-evaluation. However, we also know this is essential for a school or academy to be successful. Here are some of the types of training input we can provide.

    • How good is your school and how do you know?
    • Moving from good to great
    • Pathway to excellence
    • Getting your head around inspection
    • Monitoring teaching; evaluating learning
    • Writing self-evaluation that matters
    • Self-evaluation for phase and middle leaders
    • Self-evaluation for subject leaders
    • Whole school self-evaluation
    • Self-evaluation for governors
    • Self-evaluation in the foundation stage
    • Scrutiny of work in KS1 and KS2

     

    Record of Self-Evaluation

    We can work with you on your SED or record of self-evaluation. Our team has extensive experience working with schools across England in a diverse range of contexts. They can help you cut through the evidence to produce a sharp and incisive self-evaluation statement that draws on your evidence and ‘tells the story of your school’.

    Data analysis

    We can work with you to ensure that your data ‘stacks up’ and tells the story of your school.

    This type of work might include training and/or scrutiny of external and internal data. Focus Education can also work with you to ensure that you have manageable and robust tracking systems which work for you. (See the section on data and assessment for further information).

    In-school review work

    We can work with you to undertake a range of self-evaluation activities that build an emerging picture of strengths and developments within your school. Many schools and academies use this to back up and validate their own self-evaluation statements and often share the report with their governing body.

    These can include:

    • Lesson observations
    • Work scrutiny
    • Data analysis
    • Staff interviews
    • Pupil interviews
    • Parent interviews
    • Governor interviews

     

    Support with Writing the SED

    Let us Write Your SED for You!

    We offer a service to help you organise your self-evaluation document. We look at each of the areas outlined in the framework, taking into account the documents you send us, and give you a very good draft. 

    Focus Education has created an exclusive proforma, aligned with the new Ofsted framework, to take your information and break it down to the essentials that Ofsted is looking for.

    We transfer your information, leaving you with a strong self-evaluation ready for your SLT to review before an inspection.

    This activity is designed to take place away from your school. Our experienced consultants will complete it and send it back to you.

    What you need to do
    We require copies of the following in order to complete your Self-Evaluation Document:

    • Your latest SEF or SES (whatever state it’s in)
    • Your last Ofsted report
    • Your last religious report (if relevant)
    • Your latest SAT results
    • Your school improvement plan (again whatever state it’s in)
    • Anything else you may feel is relevant

    You may need to provide specific examples for the SED to better reflect your school. This service costs £350.

    If you want to see a sample SED, please email us and we can send you one.

    Analyse Your ASP

    A Consultant in Your School

    This training helps primary school leaders, particularly executive headteachers, headteachers, heads of school and principals, and their immediate senior leadership teams, reassess their monitoring and evaluating systems. The training will consider aspects such as the place of non-core subjects’ assessment and what we really mean by the substance of education.

    The training will:

    • Provide you with a clear understanding of how to use your ASP to help determine ‘next steps’;
    • Help you consider your school’s context with a strong emphasis on ‘what are you doing about the issues that hinder pupils’ progress?’;
    • Help you to consider a potentially different way of evaluating the quality of learning and teaching, putting even greater emphasis on learning;
    • Provide you with a monitoring framework that focuses on learning and not teaching as a way to assess the quality of classroom provision.
    • Look at the impact that developments around ‘reasoning and thinking’ have had on your pupils’ progress from Early Years to Year 6;
    • Help you to consider how effective your broader curriculum is and to what extent you are developing pupils’ basic skills across the wider curriculum;
    • This training aims to delve deeply into the learning culture across the broader curriculum at the school and academy levels. It will make you take a realistic look at what makes your school or academy great. It will focus very much on excellence and how to achieve it.

     

    Effective use of Pupil Premium

    This half-day session is aimed at principals, headteachers, deputy headteachers, assistant headteachers and school leaders of primary schools who are responsible for allocating and measuring the impact of pupil premium funding.

    The government regularly updates its guidance on pupil premium funding and holds headteachers and school governing bodies accountable for the impact of this funding.

    The training will address the following:

    • Tables that show the performance of disadvantaged pupils compared with their peers;
    • Requirements of schools to publish details online each year showing how they are using the pupil premium and the impact it is having on pupil achievement;
    • The Ofsted inspection framework, where inspectors focus on the attainment of pupil groups, and in particular those who attract the pupil premium;
    • Who qualifies for pupil premium funding;
    • What pupil premium funding can be used for;
    • What the best teaching and learning practice looks like for these learners;
    • What the research and evidence tell us about the progress that pupil premium pupils can make;
    • How we evidence ‘impact’ in raising achievement and closing the gaps;
    • How the school leadership can make a difference;
    • What materials are available to support good self-evaluation and demonstrate good value for money.

     

    How to book

    Contact our Consultancy department by email or fill in the form here. If you would like more information, look at our consultancy page, which will explain what we can offer. 

    Take a look at our resources on inspection by clicking here.