Ofsted hopes new inspections approach will ease pressure on education providers

Ofsted has now begun inspecting schools, early years settings and further education providers under a new education inspection framework. The changes, in effect from 10 November 2025, are intended to make inspection clearer and more consistent. The new framework is also designed to give more granular detail to parents on a provider’s performance and to reduce the workload and pressure on staff created by inspections. Ofsted has said that it will prioritise volunteers for full inspections between 10 November and the end of 2025, which will give other providers a grace period to familiarise themselves with the new regime.

The new framework will place increased emphasis on inclusion, to ensure that the experiences of vulnerable children and those with SEND are assessed, as well as highlighting achievement as a separate category. The evaluation areas that inspectors will focus on are:

• inclusion
• curriculum and teaching
• achievement
• attendance and behaviour
• personal development and well-being
• leadership and governance

While Ofsted has said that it will continue to assess the effectiveness of a provider’s safeguarding measures, it will not change its assessment process in this area. As a result, safeguarding will continue to be reported separately on a binary ‘Met / Not met’ basis rather than being allocated a rating.

The most significant difference between the new framework and the previous one is that it will forgo single-word judgements on the overall quality of providers. These judgements had led to serious concerns from industry bodies, such as the National Association of Head Teachers, about staff wellbeing, following the death of headteacher Ruth Perry. Instead, inspection outcomes will be presented as a report card setting out separate ratings for each area of focus ranging from ‘exceptional’ to ‘urgent improvement’.

While consulting on the report card system, Ofsted said the new ratings will enable parents to differentiate more easily between providers with the top three ratings replacing ‘outstanding’ and ‘good’. Given the vast majority of schools are rated as either ‘outstanding’ or ‘good’, the introduction of an additional rating is likely to be hugely beneficial to the highest performing schools, allowing them to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

The framework reaffirms Ofsted’s principles that inspections should support improvement and emphasises the need for greater collaboration between inspection teams and the staff working at education providers. To ensure this, the framework includes a formal code of conduct, requiring inspectors to act with professionalism, courtesy and respect. It also requires providers to be open, transparent and honest in the evidence they supply.

During the consultation process Ofsted also confirmed that the new framework would reduce the pressure of an inspection on school leaders. This will be done by having additional inspectors to enable the lead inspector to act as a more consistent point of contact, and by shortening the length of inspection days.

Ofsted has also embedded mental health awareness into its inspector training and has introduced a provider contact helpline, a national team to help with any well-being concerns during an inspection, and an ‘inspection welfare, support and guidance hub’.

An independent evaluation process has also been launched to monitor the implementation of the new inspection framework. This process will gather evidence from education providers on whether Ofsted’s aims have been realised (i.e. whether the framework has sufficiently reduced the workload on staff and whether inspections produce a more accurate reading of a provider’s performance). As part of the evaluation process, interviews will be conducted with providers in Spring 2026 to understand any early or unexpected impact arising from the implementation of the framework. A rolling survey will also be established in 2026-27 to gather the views of education providers on inspections with a final evaluation report published in 2027.

While the inspection process is likely to result in higher scrutiny of a provider’s performance in individual areas, it is also likely to give high-quality providers a clearer platform to demonstrate good practices. It is imperative that providers align their internal processes to the new framework’s core areas of focus. Monitoring their own performance against these areas will ensure that providers are well-equipped to achieve high ratings once full inspections begin under the new framework.

If you would like to discuss Ofsted’s new inspection framework in more detail, please reach out to Joshua Owolabi at joshua@gkstrategy.com.