With five new judgements applied across at least eight performance areas, critics say that the proposed new approach “creates a set of hurdles which will be bewildering for teachers and leaders”.
There are fears that it will introduce “a de facto new league table based on the sum of Ofsted judgements across at least 40 points of comparison”.
A consultation on the plans has now opened and will close on April 28. Ofsted has said it will publish the outcome in the summer with the final reforms to be implemented from autumn 2025.
It comes alongside a Department for Education consultation over proposed changes to intervention and support in state-funded schools, including new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams. These plans are also to come into effect in the autumn (see later).
Ofsted’s Report Card proposal
After the scrapping of the overall single-phrase judgement, the Ofsted proposals will introduce a new five-point scale used to grade schools across at least eight areas of performance. The consultation describes the scale:
- Exemplary: A provider where all evaluation areas are graded as at least secure and where there is a feature of practice that could be considered as exemplary.
- Strong: Practice is consistently secure across different year groups, key stages and subjects/aspects of learning.
- Secure: A secure standard of education. This includes meeting the legal requirements and the expectations in non-statutory guidance as well as the professional standards.
- Attention needed: Some aspects of provision are inconsistent, limited in scope or impact and/or not fully meeting the legal requirements, the expectations in non-statutory guidance, or professional standards. However, inspectors have determined that leaders have the capacity and means to make the necessary improvements.
- Causing concern: Needs urgent action to provide a suitable standard of education and/or care for children and learners
The areas of performance that will be subjected to this new five-point scale are:
- Leadership and governance.
- Curriculum.
- Achievement.
- Behaviour and attitudes.
- Developing teaching.
- Attendance.
- Personal development and wellbeing.
- Inclusion.
- Early years (where applicable).
- Sixth form (where applicable).
Safeguarding will not be subjected to the five-point scale – a school will simply be judged as having “met” or “not met” Ofsted’s standards.
Further proposals from Ofsted
New inspection toolkits: Ofsted plans to introduce new inspection “toolkits” tailored to each phase of education. These will list the standards that each type of provider will be evaluated against, with a number of sub-categories within each area of performance.
Inclusion: There is to be a new focus on inclusion with inspectors looking at how well providers support vulnerable and disadvantaged learners, including those with SEND. Ofsted said this would ensure that “these children are always at the centre of inspection”.
Contextual data: Ofsted is proposing to include more contextual data in inspections and reports, such as learner characteristics, performance outcomes, absence and attendance figures, and local area demographics. It said: “Inspectors will use this information to help understand the circumstances in which leaders are operating and to assess their work in context.”
Ungraded inspections axed: Another change is the end – from autumn 2025 – of ungraded inspections of state-funded schools. Ofsted is also proposing that all schools “with an identified need for improvement” will receive monitoring calls and visits “to check that timely action is being taken to raise standards”. It added: “This includes schools with any evaluation area graded ‘attention needed’. Ofsted will only monitor for as long as is necessary to see a tangible difference.”
No more deep dives: The consultation document states: “We will no longer use the deep-dive methodology.” It states that its evaluation of the current framework found that inspectors “had challenges in gathering evidence through deep dives in some contexts within the time limitations of inspection”. It adds: “Removing deep dives will give inspectors and providers significantly greater flexibility. By eliminating deep dives, this substantial amount of time can be used more flexibly, to allow leaders and inspectors to reflect on each provider’s unique context and their improvement priorities.”
Categories: When it comes to categories of concern, schools will be placed into special measures if they have a “causing concern” rating for leadership and at least one other area (or safeguarding standards “not met”). The current “serious weaknesses” category is to be renamed “requires significant improvement” and will be applicable if a school gets “causing concern” (or safeguarding “not met”) in any area except leadership, or if they get a “causing concern” rating for leadership but no other such grades and have “met” safeguarding standards.
The DfE’s consultation proposals
Plans to support England’s “forgotten schools” will see an initial £20m investment in so-called RISE teams.
Often referred to as “stuck”, these 600 or so schools have received consecutive poor Ofsted judgements. The new plans will see RISE teams working with these schools with the DfE making up to £100,000 available initially to each school for specialist support.
The plans are included in a DfE consultation over accountability and intervention measures. The consultation will close on April 28 with implementation planned for the autumn to coincide with Ofsted’s proposals.
The consultation says that under the new report card system, any school receiving an “attention needed” rating for its leadership having previously had a rating of below “good” will be considered “stuck” and will receive RISE intervention.
RISE teams are also to support schools categorised as “requiring significant improvement”. From September 2026 they will offer “mandatory targeted intervention” focusing on weaknesses identified in the report card.
Schools judged by Ofsted to require special measures will “continue by default to receive structural intervention – a maintained school will become an academy, and an existing academy will be transferred to a new trust”.
RISE teams will also work with schools that experience sharp drops in pupil attainment and the RISE system will offer “a univeral service” to “work with all schools to signpost them to the most effective practice, including DfE hubs; encourage peer-to-peer support; and bring schools together to share their knowledge and innovation”.
The RISE teams will “build upon and replace” the National Leaders of Education programme and the DfE this week unveiled the first cohort of 20 RISE advisors.
Backlash from the profession
Ofsted has been forced to reform how it operates after the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, 53, who took her own life ahead of the publication of an Ofsted inspection report that was due to downgrade her “outstanding” school to “inadequate”.
The inquest ruled that the November 2022 inspection of her school “lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity”, was at times “rude and intimidating”, and had “contributed” to her suicide.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said no lessons had been learned.
He said: “Ofsted and the government appear to have learned nothing from the death of Ruth Perry and have instead devised an accountability system which will subject a beleaguered profession to yet more misery.
“Astonishingly, Ofsted’s proposed school report cards appear to be even worse than the single-word judgements they replace. The introduction of five new judgements that can be applied across at least eight performance areas creates a set of hurdles which will be bewildering for teachers and leaders.
“We would question whether it is possible to reach with any degree of validity, in the course of an inspection, such a large number of conclusions – all of which are critical to those being inspected and where judgements may be finely balanced between categories. It is certainly a recipe for systemic inconsistency.
“Rather than reducing the pressures on teachers and leaders – a situation so serious that it is unsafe – this system will introduce a de facto new league table based on the sum of Ofsted judgements across at least 40 points of comparison.”
Mr Di’Iasio said that schools with the greatest challenges will “continue to be stigmatised by the application of the labels ‘attention needed’ and ‘causing concern’ in exactly the same way as the previous system”.
He also said that the DfE will “add to the chaos with a support system administered by its planned RISE teams which is so muddled as to be barely comprehensible”.
He added: “We are extremely disappointed with these proposals and will do everything possible to persuade Ofsted and the government to see sense.”
The strength of feeling on the ground among headteachers is also clear. In a snap poll run over three days this week by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), and which saw 3,045 school leaders responding, 92% rejected Ofsted’s proposals for five-point graded judgements across eight to 10 different areas.
There is huge cynicism too at whether Ofsted will make any meaningful changes as a result of its 12-week consultation – 96% of the leaders do not think the inspectorate will.
One school leader said: “They have done incredibly well to make a stressful and blunt approach to school inspection even more stressful and blunt. It will increase inconsistency, drive up workload and create exponentially more stress on headteachers and leaders. It has been done with haste, has not taken sufficient voice from the profession and, along with other changes is being rushed through, will be disastrous.”
Another added: “I cannot see how this new inspection model will have any positive impact on schools and especially the pressure faced by leaders. Feels like lengthening the stick to beat us with.”
Paul Whiteman, NAHT general secretary, said that the plan to keep numbered sub-judgements “risks replicating the worst aspects of the current system” and would not ease the pressure school leaders are under.
He added: “Given that Ofsted previously struggled to provide reliable judgements using a four-point scale, it is very hard to see how they will be able to do against a five-point one.”
Mr Whiteman also raised concerns about the design of the consultation: “By using open-ended, free-text questions, Ofsted will be able to avoid gathering data accurately to gauge whether there is genuine support for the model it appears to have already chosen. Ofsted is refusing to ask simple and straightforward questions about the extent to which stakeholders support these proposals.”
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said the plans would make things “worse, not better”.
He added: “The one to five grading scale proposed for the report card maintains the current blunt, reductive approach that cannot capture the complexity of school life nor provide more meaningful information to parents.
“We are concerned that inspectors categorising 10 areas into five boxes in two days will exacerbate existing issues of inconsistency and unreliability. It is also plain to see that Ofsted’s plan does not address the mental health impact of the current ‘high-stakes’ accountability systems on the profession.
“Ofsted has failed to take seriously the enormous concerns of the profession. Ofsted is a discredited organisation with its name continually in the mud. It is incapable of introspection or change. This new consultation points only to continued disaster.”
Ofsted’s response
A statement from Ofsted said: “The five-point scale will allow inspectors to highlight success when things are working well, provide reassurance that leaders are taking the right action where improvement is needed, and identify where more urgent action is required to avoid standards declining. As well as giving parents more nuanced information, this approach will help reduce pressure on staff – by presenting a balanced picture of practice across more areas, not a single overall grade.”
After its Big Listen exercise last year, Ofsted says that its new approach brings together the preferences of parents – who it says favour a “clear assessment of a wider set of categories” – and those of professionals, who it says wanted “narrative descriptions of performance”.
Launching the consultaiton, chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, said: “The 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.
“Our new top ‘exemplary’ grade will help raise standards, identifying world-class practice that should be shared with the rest of the country. And by quickly returning to monitor schools that have areas for improvement, we will ensure timely action is taken to raise standards.
“We also hope that this more balanced, fairer approach will reduce the pressure on professionals working in education, as well as giving them a much clearer understanding of what we will be considering on inspection.”
- DfE: Open consultation: School accountability reform, February 2025: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/school-accountability-reform
- Ofsted: Open consultation: Improving the way Ofsted inspects education, February 2025: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-way-ofsted-inspects-education
- Ofsted has produced a video demonstrating how the new report cards might look: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE8IOZm1eYA