New 5-point grading scale, including the new ‘exceptional’ grade, designed to raise standards, confirmed following strong support from parents.

• Parents and carers to receive more detailed information about nurseries, schools and colleges, with strengths and areas for improvement clearly highlighted.
• Schools and colleges with identified areas for improvement to receive additional monitoring inspections, ensuring swift progress.
• Nurseries and childminders to be inspected more frequently, so that all children receive the best start in life.
• Disadvantaged and vulnerable children placed at the heart of reforms, with a focus on ‘inclusion’ in every inspection.
• Greater emphasis on professionals’ wellbeing and workload through a more collaborative approach to inspection.

New-look report cards from November

From 10 November 2025, parents will receive more detail about their children’s education with the introduction of new-look report cards. Inspectors will award grades on a 5-point scale across a wider range of areas, giving parents a clearer picture of performance and helping to raise standards.

The very best practice across early years (EY), schools, further education (FE) and skills, and initial teacher education (ITE) will be recognised with a new ‘exceptional’ grade, highlighting provision that others could learn from.

Highlighting parental support

Independent YouGov polling shows strong parental backing for the changes. Almost 7 in 10 parents (67%) said they prefer the new report cards to current inspection reports, while just 15% favoured the old system. More than 8 in 10 parents found the reports easy to understand (86%) and said colour coding was useful (84%). Two thirds (66%) also supported Ofsted continuing to grade schools on a scale.

Updating grading language

Following consultation, the five grades have been renamed:

• Urgent improvement
• Needs attention
• Expected standard
• Strong standard
• Exceptional

Strengthening monitoring and early years

As part of the reforms, Ofsted will carry out monitoring inspections of schools and FE and skills providers where provision is not at the expected standard in all areas, to ensure rapid improvement.

In early years, inspection frequency will increase from every six years to every four, combined with a sharper focus on the quality of education and care.

Reforming further education and skills

Almost 80% of FE and skills providers are currently graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. The new approach will build on this strong foundation, providing learners, parents and employers with clearer information through the 5-point scale and redesigned report cards.

Evaluation areas for FE and skills inspections will include safeguarding, inclusion, leadership and governance, curriculum, teaching and training, achievement, participation and development, and contribution to local and national skills needs.

In response to provider feedback, Ofsted has streamlined the number of evaluation areas and clarified how inspectors take account of each provider’s unique context. Inspectors will also assess how well providers engage with employers and local communities to meet skills needs.

Prioritising wellbeing and inclusion

Every education inspection will now focus specifically on provision for disadvantaged children, those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND), and those known to social care, through a dedicated ‘inclusion’ grade.

Ofsted has also listened to concerns about workload and wellbeing. Changes include capping the length of inspection days, reducing unnecessary documentation requests, and committing to more professional dialogue.

Independent wellbeing review

Alongside the consultation, Ofsted commissioned an independent review of wellbeing by Sinéad McBrearty, Chief Executive of Education Support. In response, Ofsted has adopted a series of measures, including adding an extra inspector to school inspections, to make the process more collaborative and sustainable.

Jason Elsom, Chief Executive of Parentkind, welcomed the reforms:

“Ofsted has shown that it is listening to parents. The new inspection framework makes parental engagement a clear priority, which is a significant step forward and will help rebuild trust between schools and families.”

Timeline for implementation

• 10 November 2025: reforms take effect for early years, state-funded schools, and FE and skills providers.
• January 2026: implementation begins for ITE and non-association independent schools.

His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, said:

“Our new report cards will give parents a clearer understanding of strengths and areas for improvement. We will work with professionals in schools, early years and further education to help them showcase the best of what they do – and identify where they can improve.”

“Ofsted exists to keep children safe and improve their lives.

“Children deserve the best possible education; their parents deserve the best possible information; and education professionals deserve to have their work fairly assessed. The changes we are presenting today aim to achieve all three.”

Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said:  

“Every child deserves a brilliant education – and that means a system that’s relentlessly focused on strong accountability that puts children first.  

“New school report cards will raise the bar for standards across the board, shining a light on what’s working and where change is needed. By providing a fuller picture of school performance – from attendance and behaviour to inclusion – we’re giving parents the transparency they deserve and schools the tools to improve.

“From school inspection to new technology, to experts who have been there and done it – through our Plan for Change we will use every lever we can to boost the life chances of our children and ensure aspiration is not just the preserve of some, but the right of each and every young person, wherever they grow up.”

Sector Reaction

Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“Inspections should do two things – provide parents with an accurate reflection of a school’s performance while doing so without placing an excessive burden on staff. Ofsted’s plans achieve neither objective. The tweaks made to its proposals following the consultation period are just that – minor and cosmetic changes to a flawed rationale. To make matters worse, the planned introduction of this system is far too rushed and gives schools little time to prepare for a huge change in how they will be inspected.

“As we have warned on many occasions, it will not be possible to apply reliably a five-point grading scale across multiple evaluation areas during the course of a single inspection. Even with the number of evaluation areas slightly streamlined, this exercise requires inspectors to make a large number of finely balanced judgements in a very short space of time. Regardless of the amount of training delivered, it is unlikely that inspection teams will be able to do this consistently between different settings, and the result will be a system that is inherently unreliable. 

“The new inspection system will also place a huge amount of stress on school and college leaders and their staff because they will face so many judgements across so many areas. Those achieving the ‘expected standard’ will effectively be told that this is not good enough, and they should be striving for ‘strong’ and ‘exceptional.’ It is a recipe for professional burn-out with the implication that however hard you work you should be doing better. 

“Let’s remember that this entire process began with the suicide of a headteacher under the previous inspection system. Yet here we are with a reformed system which appears to be even worse. We are gravely concerned about the welfare of leaders and teachers as well as the impact on recruitment and retention.

“We will spend some time now looking in detail at the proposals and consulting with our members over our next steps. We have previously said that we will consider encouraging members who serve as Ofsted inspectors to withdraw their services and we will now put that question to our elected members.” 

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

“It is abundantly clear that Ofsted’s new approach to inspection poses a direct risk to the health and wellbeing of school leaders. By not only persisting with grading, but extending it across a larger number of areas, Ofsted is perpetuating a high-stakes punitive regime which risks serious harm to school leaders and teachers with career-defining consequences.

“The inspectorate had the opportunity to really listen to the profession – instead it has determined to stick to a model that was overwhelming rejected when unveiled earlier this year.

“While we have achieved a number of hard-won concessions, such as a reduction in the number of separate areas being graded and a limit to the number of hours an inspector can be in school for, the fundamental problems we identified at the start of the year remain.

“The independent wellbeing impact assessment is frankly damning. It speaks of an inspectorate that has completely lost the trust of the profession, that has failed to properly listen to teachers and leaders, and whose own inspectors have low morale. Most importantly, it finds the revised framework ‘does not reduce the pressure on leaders to achieve a desirable outcome’.  Given these findings, it is remarkable Ofsted plans to press ahead with its plans this term.

“Ofsted has simply ignored many areas of the impact assessment, including suggestions to slow-down the roll-out of the framework and reconsider the exemplary standard, while doing nowhere near enough to heed the call for genuine independence in handling complaints.

“Small-scale parental polling and focus groups have been used to justify forcing through a model of inspection that Ofsted had already predetermined was its preferred one. Grading might appear clear for parents, but to try and judge schools definitively across so many areas during what is simply a two-day snapshot, seriously risks them being given unfair and misleading judgements.

“Rather than listen to the very real concerns put forward by NAHT and others in the profession, the inspectorate has sought to portray those who disagree with their proposals as being ‘anti-accountability’. This is as insulting as it is wrong and parents will see right through it.

“What happens next will be key. To be clear, given the findings of the independent wellbeing impact assessment, NAHT believes these proposals should not go ahead in their current state. To do so would be to continue to put the wellbeing and safety of school staff at risk.

“As a bare minimum, there now must be a clear commitment to independently monitor and evaluate the impact of any new approach. The risks of not doing so are simply too high.”

David Hughes, Chief Executive, Association of Colleges said:

“The new approach to inspecting colleges released by Ofsted with its suite of new documents will take some time to fully digest. 

“College leaders and AoC staff have provided a lot of feedback to Ofsted as part of the Big Listen, the consultation on the proposed changes and the testing of the approach in individual colleges over the last few months and it is clear that some positive changes have been made as a result of that feedback. 

“Fundamentally, we will only know if this is going to work from the first inspections implementing it, and we will support Ofsted and colleges to try to make sure it does work well. We remain concerned about the speed of implementation at the busiest time of the year for colleges, with enrolment and induction underway of new students at the start of the academic year.”

Responding to the consultation outcome, NASBTT CEO Emma Hollis said:

“Our members will be pleased to note that most of the revisions recommended by NASBTT, in consultation with our membership, have been adopted. Ofsted have worked hard to secure much greater clarity and consistency, addressing our key concerns about muddle and ambiguity. We also welcome the refined language used in the grade descriptors. The explicit expectation that providers identified as demonstrating exceptional practice will share and collaborate with others is warmly welcomed. This aligns with the excellent commitment to collaborative work already taking place across our membership, of which we are exceptionally proud.”

Responding to Ofsted’s launch of their new report cards for school inspections, Munira Wilson MP, Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson, said: 

“I’m glad to see Ofsted cracking on with some sensible reforms to the grading system and moving away from one word judgements.

“But if we are to prevent tragedies like Ruth Perry’s death from happening again, we need a much bigger cultural change and an end to the adversarial relationship between schools and Ofsted.

“While the regulator’s focus on inclusion is a step in the right direction, this tweak must come hand in hand with root and branch reform to the SEND system.  

“Meanwhile we are still in the dark about the Government’s plan for a school improvement regime. We need to hear from Ministers on what they will do to help schools that don’t meet Ofsted’s higher grades to ensure children across the country get the best possible education.”

Matt Wrack, General Secretary of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union, said:

“If Ofsted hoped to win back the trust of teachers with their inspection reforms, they have failed at the highest level. Not only have they neglected to prioritise transparent communication with teachers and their unions throughout the consultation process, but the final reforms are disturbingly light on consideration of teachers at all.

“NASUWT remains gravely concerned that the new inspection regime is not fit for purpose and will harm the wellbeing of teachers and headteachers. Despite the fact these changes were prompted in part by the tragic death of headteacher Ruth Perry – following a Coroner’s report that held Ofsted partially responsible for her death – the reform’s independent assessment on teacher wellbeing has not been made widely available to stakeholders for review. This lack of communication is evasive and demonstrates a failure to engage with educators.

“Sir Martyn Oliver came into office stating that he wanted to see Ofsted tread less heavily on the school system. However, instead of ‘less Ofsted’, it would appear that we now have more Ofsted than ever before. The new inspection system is bloated with buzzwords but dangerously low on clarity; how, for example, will Ofsted judge a school’s approach to inclusion if they admit that it is ‘not their place’ to define inclusion? Who, then, will be responsible for defining ‘inclusion’ and other terms a school will be judged against? At a time when inclusion demands weigh heavily on schools but funding and external support reduce by the day, this seems particularly cruel to teachers and the pupils they are desperate to support.

“We and our fellow education unions asked Ofsted to delay the launch of its new regime to allow for further consultations and pilot schemes. We were all ignored. But we will continue to fight for an inspection system that prioritises teacher and leader wellbeing, alongside genuine partnership for school improvement – something that is in the best interests of teachers, pupils and parents alike.”

Commenting on Ofsted’s response to the consultation on their planned new report cards, Natalie Perera, Chief Executive of the Education Policy Institute, said: 

“Introducing a new inspection system and juggling the different priorities of parents and teachers was always going to be a challenge.

“Any reform to inspection comes with high stakes. As our own research has found, a flawed system can have a negative impact on pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Getting this wrong can have an adverse effect on teacher retention, school funding and the ability of a school to recover and deliver high standards.

“Ofsted has made some changes to the new inspection arrangements, following feedback from the sector and parents. We welcome the move the fewer evaluation areas as well as a greater focus on inclusion across the framework and the recognition of wellbeing of staff and pupils. We remain concerned that inspectors will struggle to distinguish between a five-point scale, this approach suggests a level of precision that will be difficult to achieve through a relatively short inspection process. 

“It is important that schools are given enough time to adapt to these new arrangements, and that inspectors are given adequate training. We are pleased to see that Ofsted will be commissioning an external evaluation of these reforms, and we hope this signals a commitment to continued improvement.”

Simon Ashworth, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Policy at AELP said:

“AELP is encouraged to see a number of the changes confirmed by Ofsted reflect the points we raised in our consultation submission, including the reduction and merging of evaluation areas, clearer, sector-appropriate grading terminology and definitions, along with a stronger commitment to matching inspectors with relevant sector expertise.

“While Ofsted has introduced a steady and assured phased rollout, the 10^th of November 2025 start for AELP members and FE & Skills providers falls short of the breathing space we believe is both necessary and appropriate.”