Read about changes to Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework for 2025, the outcome of Ofsted's consultation on improving inspections, and the new school inspection toolkit, operating guide and information.
We’re updating our school inspection content across our site. Select ‘save for later’ at the top of any article page and we’ll notify you when it’s ready.
Routine inspections are suspended until 10 November 2025 at the earliest
Inspections will resume, under the new framework:
- 10 November 2025: for early years, state-funded schools, and FE and skills inspections
- January 2026: for initial teacher education (ITE) and non-association independent school inspections
For state-funded school inspections, between 10 November and Christmas, Ofsted will ‘prioritise’ schools that have volunteered for inspection under the new system.
If you're a state-funded school and you have not volunteered for inspection, you won’t be inspected before 1 December.
This is set out under 'Next steps' in the 'Starting inspections’ section of Ofsted’s consultation outcome.
New report card and grading system
Your school will receive a report card, instead of single-word judgements, in your inspection outcome.
In schools, the report card will cover:
- Safeguarding
- Inclusion
- Curriculum and teaching
- Achievement
- Attendance and behaviour
- Personal development and wellbeing
- Leadership and governance
- Early years (if applicable)
- Sixth form (if applicable)
Safeguarding will be judged separately as a stand-alone area, as either ‘met’ or ‘not met’.
The other areas will be judged on a 5-point grading scale. These grades have been renamed since the consultation proposals, and will be:
- Exceptional
- Strong standard
- Expected standard
- Needs attention
- Urgent improvement
Your school's report card will also include a short narrative explanation for each grade.
For more details on the report cards, see Ofsted’s video explaining what they will look like.
New toolkit can help you evaluate your school's provision
The school inspection toolkit includes the criteria for meeting grades in each area, and information on what evidence inspectors will gather to inform their judgements.
See 'leadership and governance' for how your strategic role will be inspected.
The criteria in the toolkits is based on the requirements, standards and expectations already placed on your leaders and school, such as statutory and non-statutory guidance. Your school isn't expected to do any additional work, or create any new evidence, to prepare for inspection.
New ‘categories of concern’ will trigger monitoring inspections
A school will be placed into a ‘category of concern’ if:
- It receives a judgement of ‘urgent improvement’ in any area, or
- Safeguarding has been graded ‘not met’
The categories of concern are:
- Special measures: if leadership and governance is also graded ‘urgent improvement’
- Requires significant improvement: if leadership and governance is not graded ‘urgent improvement’
Any school in a category of concern will receive a monitoring inspection once every term.
Monitoring inspections will focus on the specific areas for improvement.
This is set out in the 'identifying schools causing concern' section of the consultation response, and updated guidance on support and intervention in schools.
Monitoring for schools with any evaluation area graded as ‘needs attention’
These monitoring inspections will only look at the evaluation areas that were graded below the ‘expected standard’.
Your school can nominate a staff member to work with inspectors
Ofsted has invited schools to nominate a senior member of staff to support planning, communication and engagement through inspection.
This isn’t a requirement – your school can choose whether or not to have a nominee.
Find full details of this role in Ofsted's school inspection: operating guide for inspectors.
No more deep dives
Inspectors will no longer carry out deep dives of specific curriculum areas, to reduce the workload for middle leaders. These were an inspection methodology that focused on how certain subjects were taught in the school.
Instead, inspectors will focus on your school’s context and improvement priorities. They will gather evidence on each of the core inspection areas, as set out in the school inspection toolkit.
Other changes
Other changes set out in the EIF and consultation outcome include:
- No more ungraded inspections: all inspections will be full, graded inspections (with the exception of monitoring inspections for categories of concern)
- Ofsted will launch a new service called 'Ofsted: explore an area’, which publishes data from other schools around your local area, to explain how your performance sits within your local context. This service will go live in November
- Inspectors will be able to pause inspections where they have a wellbeing concern about school leaders or staff members
- An extra inspector will attend the first day of inspection to boost capacity
- School inspectors will now receive mental health training
- New ‘reasonable time frames’ for inspections will ask inspectors to finish the first day of inspection at 5pm
Next steps
- Read our more detailed summary to get to grips with what the changes mean for your school, and discuss this as a board
- Get your head around the 'leadership and governance' section of the school inspection toolkit, as well as any other areas that you have responsibility for – for example, as link governor
- Select 'save for later' on:
- Any of our Ofsted content that you want to be notified about when we update it in line with the 2025 framework
- Our rolling Ofsted updates article, to be notified of any further changes on all things Ofsted