On Tuesday, 9 September, Ofsted published an updated version of its Education Inspection Framework. Here, our Head of Curriculum Design, Caroline Hall, outlines the key changes and shares her thoughts on whether the renewed framework achieves its goals.

Why has the Education Inspection Framework changed?

Anyone who has worked in schools will recognise the pressure an Ofsted inspection can place on staff — not only during the visit itself but in the weeks, months and even years leading up to ‘the call’. The tragic death of headteacher Ruth Perry following an inspection in 2023 brought this issue into sharp relief and intensified calls for reform.

What was the consultation process?

In March 2024, Ofsted launched The Big Listen to gather the views of parents, teachers, leaders, governors and others with an interest in education. In September that year, they published initial outcomes and identified the following ambitions for change:

• Reset our relationship with those we regulate and inspect, working collaboratively with them to put children and learners first.
• Foster a culture of integrity in which we always treat people with professionalism, courtesy, empathy and respect.
• Be a learning organisation that operates transparently, listens to challenges and takes action to change.

Draft proposals for a new inspection framework were shared for consultation in June 2025. Ofsted has now published the final framework, which will apply to inspections from 10 November 2025.

What are the key changes?

The reforms affect:

• The inspection format
• Grading and reporting
• Evaluation areas and inclusion
• Inspection criteria

Inspection format

In recent years, inspection arrangements have varied: some schools received ungraded visits, others underwent graded inspections with a deep dive and some experienced long gaps between inspections.

The overall effectiveness grade was removed from September 2024. Now, Ofsted has announced they will only carry out full inspections from November 2025.

The way inspections are run is also shifting: deep dives will no longer be the standard approach, inspection days will be capped, teams will be larger and schools can nominate a member of staff to attend daily inspection meetings.

Grading and reporting

The familiar four-point scale is being replaced with a new five-point scale and schools will no longer receive a single overall judgement. Instead, parents will see a report card showing separate grades and narrative explanations for each evaluation area. Safeguarding will be reported differently from other areas.

Evaluation areas and inclusion

The number and focus of evaluation areas have changed. There are now six evaluation areas, with additional grades for EYFS (Reception) where relevant. Safeguarding is always assessed separately.

A key change is that inclusion is now a separate evaluation area. Attendance is also explicitly graded within a combined ‘attendance and behaviour’ category.

Inspection criteria

Ofsted has introduced inspection toolkits, which set out the standards for each evaluation area and specify what inspectors should look for at each point on the five-point scale. The toolkits will be publicly available, ensuring that schools and inspectors use the same materials.

This change offers more detail about how inspection outcomes are defined, while also clearly outlining the criteria against which schools will be assessed.

Thoughts from our Head of Curriculum Design

Ofsted describes this as the biggest overhaul of inspection in years, but to me it seems more like a return to familiar territory. I remember in 2012 when ‘satisfactory’ was replaced with ‘requires improvement’; and now with the new five-point scale, we have ‘expected standard’, which seems very similar to the old ‘satisfactory’ to me. Education reform often seems frustratingly cyclical — a rebrand here, a tweak there — and this seems like another one of those times.

At the same time, the removal of overall grades, the introduction of report cards and the addition of a separate focus on inclusion do represent shifts in how schools are judged and described. Whether those shifts feel meaningful to teachers and leaders depends on how inspections are carried out in practice — something that, in my view, matters more than the labels themselves.

Ofsted has said they want to reset their relationship with the sector, foster integrity and respect and become a learning organisation. However, these structural changes alone are unlikely to achieve that. For me, the true test will be how Ofsted uses monitoring visits and collaborates with the Regional Improvement in Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams — and whether this represents genuine support for schools to improve, rather than mechanisms to catch schools out.

Transparency will also be key. I remember when leaked Ofsted training materials circulated a few years ago. Like many, I was struck by the fact that such important resources weren’t openly available to schools. It felt a bit like a teacher withholding the success criteria from pupils and then marking them down for not meeting expectations they were never told about! 

Ofsted has now announced they will publish training manuals, which is at least a step in the right direction — though whether that results in genuine collaboration with schools remains to be seen.

At Kapow Primary, we will update our Ofsted inspection toolkits in the coming weeks to help schools manage these changes and ensure they understand what is required under the new framework.