We have been tracking every Ofsted inspection report published since September 2023. Our focus has been on helping schools being ready for inspections through webinars, our inspection readiness audit tool and bespoke support.
We also routinely blog about our analysis of the 25,000+ improvement recommendations made to schools as a ‘need to improve’ or ‘next step’. This post presents our first analysis of what is happening under the new inspection framework, based on almost 550 ‘next steps’ published in reports for schools that have been inspected since November 2025.
We will outline which areas of the new framework are gaining greater prominence and touch upon what we are learning about gradings for each area. We will also examine the most frequent next steps identified by inspection teams since November, to see how this has changed since last academic year and how this varies for primary and secondary schools.
Focus on the new Ofsted framework
The table below shows the impact of new processes upon the focus of inspection teams. As we have been tracking inspection outcomes since September 2023, we were able to put the old wine of previous inspections under the 2019 framework, into the new bottles of the 2025 framework inspection areas. The left-hand column shows what this looks like for the reports for schools inspected in the 2024-25 academic year.
The right-hand column shows the new wine in new bottles (i.e. next steps for school inspected under the new framework since November 2025). Flowing from this, the final two columns show the actual and relative differences from the 2024-25 academic year to the first batch of reports for inspections undertaken between November 2025 and January 2026.
| EIF Focus | % of Need to Improves (Sep 24 to Jul 25) | % of Next Steps (Nov 25 to Jan 26) | Actual Change | Relative Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum and Teaching | 65.4% | 43.7% | -21.7% | -33.2% |
| Leadership and Governance | 10.8% | 19.5% | +8.8% | +80.6% |
| Attendance and Behaviour | 9.7% | 13.3% | +3.6 | +37.1% |
| Achievement | 1.9% | 9.8% | +7.9% | +415.8% |
| Inclusion | 7.4% | 9.3% | +1.9% | +25.7% |
| Personal Development and Wellbeing | 4.0% | 3.9% | -0.1% | -2.5% |
| Safeguarding | 0.8% | 0.4% | -0.4% | -50% |
Focusing on the relative change column, we can see some striking patterns about how the new Ofsted framework is guiding inspection teams in identifying next steps for school improvement. What leaps out is the massively increased frequency of next steps for schools around achievement, one of the newly introduced areas of focus. It is more than four times more likely to be identified as an improvement need than was the case last academic year.
Arguably more surprisingly (but arguably not) the next biggest increase in focus is on leadership and governance, which has gone from just over 1 in 10 improvement needs to close to 1 in 5 next steps since the new framework became operational. Much has been made of how leaders have come into sharper focus during the inspection process, but the early evidence is that they have also come into sharper focus in the inspection reports as well.
Attendance and behaviour comments have been another area where the new framework is clearly driving the behaviour of inspection teams, but there is a crucial caveat to that insight and that is the very significant decrease in next steps related to behaviour. In 2024-25, improvement needs specifically focused on behaviour were at 4.1% whereas in the first of the new inspection reports, they are only 1.2% of next steps. I have blogged before about the strange and perhaps worrying decline in focus by inspection teams on behaviour in October 2025 and in March 2025 and the new Ofsted framework appears to be continuing and accelerating that trend.
There has been a relatively modest increase (by a quarter) of next steps around inclusion as the new framework has been implemented. This could be a little surprising given the amount of airtime that has been given to inclusion in the lead-up to the implementation of the new framework. However, as will be discussed later in this post, there is a strong argument that the idea of inclusion as a lens for other judgement areas has impacted on inspection processes.
And finally, it is worth paying attention to what aspects of the framework have been receiving less attention since November. Safeguarding concerns have been far less frequently given as next steps, reflecting a longer period of decline as the inspectorate responded to the coroner’s finding after the death of Ruth Perry. There has also been a marginal decrease in the proportion of next steps around personal development and wellbeing since 2024-25 and, once again, this has been part of a wider trend since the 2023-24 academic year.
The biggest actual (rather than relative) decline has been in the proportion of next steps around curriculum and teaching. We noted this during the last academic year, when considering the old Ofsted framework judgements against the new framework headings. However, it is now clear that the new inspection areas are reducing focus upon curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment practices. Of course, curriculum and learning remain paramount for a positive inspection for schools, but their prominence is now more than counterbalanced by other aspects of provision.
Focus on the new judgements
The table below shows the mean judgements awarded by inspection teams since November 2025, based on the Exceptional judgement given a numeric value of 5, the Strong Standard judgement as 4, and so on to Urgent Improvement represented by 1. Here, the colour coding shows the areas scoring higher than the mean for all judgements in green and those scoring lower than the mean for all judgements in red.
| Inspection framework focus | Mean judgement |
|---|---|
| Personal Development and Wellbeing judgement | 3.25 |
| Inclusion judgement | 3.09 |
| Attendance and Behaviour judgement | 2.98 |
| Leadership and Governance judgement | 2.96 |
| All judgements | 2.95 |
| Curriculum and Teaching judgement | 2.73 |
| Achievement judgement | 2.66 |
As with the 2019 inspection framework, personal development and wellbeing is the strongest area, which is perhaps reflected in the fact that it features less often in next steps than any other area of the framework (other than safeguarding). What is perhaps more surprising, given the rhetoric around the 2025 framework, is that inclusion is the second most highly rated area.
The achievement judgement is clearly the most stringent judgement under the new framework, followed by curriculum and teaching and then by leadership and governance. In my next blog, I will explore these mean judgements more thoroughly to analyse how they are showing variation by school types, by geography and, crucially, by previous inspection outcome.
Focus on the ‘next steps’
The right-hand column of the table below shows the top ten most frequent ‘next steps’ from reports published under the new Ofsted framework so far across all types of school. The colour coding indicates where the frequency of the ‘next steps’ has increased (green) or decreased (red) since last academic year. The left-hand column gives the top ten ‘need to improve’ comments for 2024-25 along with their frequency across all school types.
| Top Ten Need to Improves (Sep 24 to Jul 25) | Top Ten Next Steps (Nov 25 to Jan 26) |
|---|---|
| Assessment for checking understanding (15.7%) | Teacher curriculum implementation (11.6%) |
| Teacher curriculum implementation (11.9%) | Attendance and/or punctuality rates (11.0%) |
| Subject content, knowledge and/or sequencing (6.9%) | Teaching and learning of writing skills (10.6%) |
| Teaching and learning of writing skills (6.7%) | Assessment for checking understanding (9.3%) |
| Special educational needs provision (5.5%) | Early years curriculum, learning, environment (5.0%) |
| Adaptations to challenge/support pupils (5.5%) | Appropriate professional learning for staff (4.4%) |
| Attendance and/or punctuality rates (5.3%) | Adaptations to challenge/support pupils (4.2%) |
| Prior knowledge recall in lessons (4.9%) | Monitoring and evaluation processes (3.5%) |
| Reading and phonics planning and delivery (4.6%) | Support from staff for addressing barriers (3.5%) |
| Evaluation of curriculum impact (2.5%) | Communication, language, vocabulary development (3.1%) |
It is notable that the three ‘next steps’ in the top ten that are reducing in frequency are around the enacted curriculum and classroom practice. This reflects the way in which the new framework is focusing a lot less on curriculum and teaching than its predecessor (as outlined earlier in this post). But, as explained earlier, this does not render the Curriculum and Teaching area of the new framework insignificant: Teacher implementation, formative assessment and adaptations together still represent over a quarter of all next steps issued since the introduction of the new framework.
But there are clear signs that, whilst the delivery of the curriculum remains pre-eminent for success on inspection, its pre-eminence is not so total as before. The focus on attendance to school, for instance, has more than doubled in frequency from an already strong position in 2024-25. There is also an enhanced focus on other foundational elements for the achievement, belonging and thriving of learners: Early years provision, the teaching of writing skills, support to address barriers, and the development of communication skills by children have become significantly more frequently mentioned by inspection teams as next steps for schools.
And finally, it is worth noting that there is an enhanced focus on the practice of leaders in monitoring and evaluating the impact of their work and – as expected from the new framework – the provision of appropriate professional learning for staff.
Focus on primary and secondary ‘next steps’
The table below looks at the top ten next steps for the phases that have had the most reports published since the change to inspection processes in November: primaries and secondaries. As above, the changes since the 2024-25 academic year are indicated by the colour-coding, with increases shown as green and decreases shown as red.
| Primary Schools Top Ten Next Steps (Nov 25 to Jan 26) | Secondary Schools Top Ten Next Steps (Nov 25 to Jan 26) |
| Teaching and learning of writing skills (12.7%) | Assessment for checking understanding (15.9%) |
| Teacher curriculum implementation (10.7%) | Attendance and/or punctuality rates (14.6%) |
| Attendance and/or punctuality rates (10.5%) | Teacher curriculum implementation (12.2%) |
| Assessment for checking understanding (8.2%) | Adaptations to challenge/support pupils (9.8%) |
| Early years curriculum, learning, environment (6.5%) | Foundational skills for learning (4.9%) |
| Appropriate professional learning for staff (4.7%) | Post-16 provision, learning and achievement (4.9%) |
| Communication, language, vocabulary development (3.5%) | Support from staff for addressing barriers (4.9%) |
| Adaptations to challenge/support pupils (3.5%) | Teaching and learning of writing skills (4.9%) |
| Subject content, knowledge and/or sequencing (3.2%) | Provision of effective personal development (4.9%) |
| Support from staff for addressing barriers (3.0%) | Appropriate professional learning for staff (3.7%) |
As previously discussed, all the next steps that are decreasing in frequency are related to the curriculum and its teaching. It should, however, be noted that for secondary schools there has been a very significant increase in the focus on teacher adaptation of learning which more than offsets the slightly diminished focus on formative assessment practices.
It is notable that the focus on both early years and post-16 provision has increased under the new framework. For primaries, early years is twice as likely to be identified as a next step than was the case last year, whilst post-16 provision is four times more likely to be a next step for secondary school leaders than was the case in 2024-25.
Attendance is also significantly more likely to be identified as a next step for both sectors. For secondaries, the change in frequency since last year means it is 1.5 times more likely to come up as an improvement need, whilst primaries are more than twice as likely to have it as a next step than was the case in 2024-25.
There is an increased focus on inclusion for both primaries and secondaries. For primaries, this is emerging as a more than fourfold increase in comments about how children are supported to develop their communication skills. For secondaries, there has been a gargantuan increase in the focus on foundational skills, from 0.1% of all secondary needs last year to 4.9% this year so far. Support for students with identified barriers has also increased across both phases, up fourfold for secondaries and fifteenfold for primaries.
Conclusions
In this post, we have outlined how the new Ofsted inspection framework is impacting on inspection processes. Our key findings for school leaders, so far, have been:
- Whilst curriculum and teaching remain paramount, a massively increased focus on achievement is something about which school leaders need to be particularly aware.
- The increased focus on leadership and governance during the inspection process is being reflected in a much sharper focus on leadership and governance next steps.
- The achievement, curriculum and teaching, and leadership and governance gradings are hardest won and are frequently lower than for other areas of the inspection schedule.
- Attendance and other foundations for achievement, belonging and thriving of learners are coming under increased focus for ‘next steps’ in comparison to the 2019 framework.
- School leaders should be aware that early years’ provision for primaries and post-16 provision for secondaries are much more in focus than has been the case previously.
- Inclusion as a separate strand of the framework appears to be less of a robust focus for inspection teams than inclusion as a lens for looking at other areas of judgement.
Discover more in our webinar
If you have learned something from these insights and would like to delve deeper into our analysis of the new inspection process, you can join us for our upcoming Readiness for Ofsted Inspection webinar.
If you would like to know more about how we can mobilise our insights to support your school in its readiness for Ofsted inspection work, you can book a call to discuss the options available to you.
