Ofsted launches public consultation on education inspections
Ofsted’s chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, has today unveiled planned changes by the Ofsted schools inspectorate and launched a public consultation – Improving the way Ofsted inspects education.
The public consultation is asking parents, carers, professionals and learners for their thoughts on Ofsted’s proposed changes to education inspections and the introduction of report cards for providers.
The proposed changes include replacing Ofsted’s one word inspection judgements with report cards in England and is aimed at settings where children and adults learn including early years.
Commenting on the consultation Purnima Tanuku CBE, Chief Executive of National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) said:
“This is a hugely important consultation so it’s vital that Ofsted fully engages with the early education sector to make sure this new system is fair for both parents and providers. The new system must reassure parents and support early years providers in their work to improve children’s outcomes.
“We will be looking carefully through all the consultation documents then liaising with the sector about their views on this new inspection process. NDNA will organise a number of events with Ofsted to help providers understand the proposals and share their views.
“The new inspection framework must be focussed in its commitment to improve children’s outcomes. It must also be equitable so that all types of providers within early education and care receive the same inspection experience that supports providers in delivering high quality.
“It is important that through this process, Ofsted listens to the feedback from the sector in order to make the desired improvements to the inspection process.”
The consultation is also aimed at state-funded schools, non-association independent schools, further education and skills (FE and skills) and initial teacher education (ITE).
A summary of the proposals by Ofsted are as follows:
- Report cards – these would give parents and carers more detailed information than the current reports, including a new 5-point grading scale to evaluate more areas of a provider’s work and short summaries of what inspectors found.
- Education inspection toolkits – this tool shows providers and inspectors the evaluation areas that we’ll focus inspections on and how we’ll assess and grade providers (scroll down to see our toolkits).
- Inspection methodology – changes to how we carry out inspection.
- Full inspections and monitoring inspections, state-funded schools – we plan to end ungraded inspections of state-funded schools and change our monitoring programmes so that we can check that timely action is taken to raise standards.
- Identifying state-funded schools causing concern – a new approach to how we’ll place a school into a category of concern.
This consultation closes at 11:59pm on 28 April 2025.
The Guardian reported that:
Oliver said the new report card would be fairer and more balanced, reducing the strains on schools and teachers by using “a laser light instead of a floodlight” to focus on key areas during inspections.
“The report card will replace the simplistic overall judgment with a suite of grades, giving parents much more detail and better identifying the strengths and areas for improvement for a school, early years or further education provider,” he said.
- England
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