How Ofsted inspects personal development and wellbeing

Understand how Ofsted will inspect personal development and wellbeing in your school under the 2025 framework, and the key evidence it will consider.

Last reviewed on 23 September 2025See updates
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Contents
  1. Your role as a governing board
  2. Personal development and wellbeing is evaluated on a 5-point scale
  3. What Ofsted is looking for
  4. How your school will be graded
  5. How Ofsted will gather evidence
  6. Next steps

Your role as a governing board

As a governing board, you won't be inspected under Ofsted's personal development and wellbeing evaluation area. 

The sections below cover how Ofsted will inspect your school leaders in this area. You're not expected to know this information in great detail because your role involves monitoring your school's approach.

Personal development and wellbeing is evaluated on a 5-point scale

Personal development and wellbeing is 1 of the evaluation areas that will appear on your school’s inspection report card. Each area will be graded using Ofsted’s new 5-point grading system, with Ofsted expecting most schools to attain at least ‘expected standard’ in each evaluation area. The exception is safeguarding, which is either 'met' or 'not met'.

The grades are:

'Personal development’ was a judgement area under the previous school inspection system. ‘Inclusion’ was previously considered part of this judgement, but has now been pulled out