Six Months Later: What we are learning about the new inspection framework

This week marks the half-year anniversary of the introduction into inspection practice of Ofsted’s new inspection framework. I have written several blogposts in the intervening period to try and make sense of the emerging data from Ofsted inspection reports published since the switch from the 2019 framework. You can find these on SSAT’s website here.

SSAT’s Inspection Tracker is, we believe, the most thorough attempt to get under the bonnet of the inspection process. Although we do not yet have sixth months of reports to analyse (the latest reports take us up to late March), we do have well over 3000 ‘next steps’ from every inspection report published so far (up to and including 14^th May 2026, at time of writing).

In this short post, I want to do two things. Firstly, to identify what appear to be consistent patterns and established trends within the data. And secondly, to notice some microtrends that potentially show how the new framework is evolving in response to actual inspections.

Established patterns and emerging trends for broad inspection focus

• Curriculum and Teaching is far less frequently mentioned than the Quality of Education was under the previous framework. It previously underpinned about two-thirds of ‘need to improve’ under the old EIF and is now representing less than half of ‘next steps’ under the new EIF (43.1% to be exact).
• The proportion of Leadership and Governance ‘next steps’ has almost doubled from around 10% when it was previously Leadership and Management, to being one of every five ‘next steps’ (19.5%)
• Attendance and Behaviour (13.0%), Achievement (9.4%), and Inclusion (9.2%) are the areas of focus in the middle of the pack. It is worth noting that Attendance and Behaviour has become marginally more frequent for schools inspected in February and March, whilst Inclusion has become marginally less frequent over the same period.
• Personal Development and Wellbeing continues to be the Cinderella of the inspection framework, mustering only 5.2% of the published ‘next steps’ for schools since November. However, for each month of the new framework in action, PDW has been gaining in frequency and (as yet incomplete) data for March 2026 has this section of the framework appearing as 7.3% of all ‘next steps’.
• Safeguarding issues continue to remain blessedly rare, at 0.5% of all ‘next steps’ following the changes made to how Ofsted inspects safeguarding in September 2024.

Established patterns and emerging trends for specific next steps

• There are four specific ‘next steps’ that are very common across schools. The first is ‘teacher curriculum implementation’ (10.9%), followed by ‘formative assessment’ (9.3%), ‘attendance and punctuality’ (9.2%), and ‘teaching of writing’ (8.6%). Every phase of education has at least three of these as high frequency needs.
• There are four other fairly common ‘next steps’: ‘in-class adaptations’ (4.8%), ‘early years’ (4.8%), ‘monitoring and evaluation’ (4.2%), and ‘foundational knowledge’ (3.7%).
• For schools offering specialist provision (special schools, PRUs, special independent schools) ‘professional learning’ (4.4%) and ‘staff knowledge’ (3.8%) are also fairly common ‘next steps’ for inspected schools.
• Amongst other common ‘next steps’ there are some that are running at an all time high since the start of 2026. These include ‘pupil outcomes’ (3.0%), ‘support for addressing barriers’ (2.6%), ‘governance challenge and support’ (2.5%), ‘professional learning’ (2.5%), and ‘personal development provision’ (2.4%).

Established patterns and emerging trends around grading

Note: To calculate patterns and trends in grading, we give a score of 5 for any ‘exceptional’ judgement down to a score of 1 for any ‘urgent improvement’ judgement. We then aggregate these judgements, and so a mean of 3.00 would equate to an ‘expected standard’.

• The mean of all grades (linked to each ‘next step’) is 2.80, which is between ‘needs attention’ and ‘expected standard’ although much closer to the latter. The lowest means are for ‘achievement’ at 2.54 and ‘curriculum and teaching’ at 2.60. The highest means are for ‘personal development and wellbeing’ at 3.09 and ‘inclusion’ at 2.94.
• By phase, primary schools have an overall mean grade of 2.82 marginally above the mean for all schools (2.80). In the earlier stages of the new framework implementation, this was not the case and primaries were faring badly. Secondaries have a mean grade exactly in line with the mean for all schools of 2.80. The outliers at the top end are through schools (2.88) and the bottom end are PRUs (2.46), but the data for these phases are much smaller at this stage and therefore far less reliable.
• Converter academies (2.93) and free schools (2.92) are doing much better than the mean for all schools, closely followed be special independents (2.87) and their data are reasonably robust (very robust in the case of converter academies. Community schools (2.72), sponsored academies (2.74) and foundation/voluntary schools (2.75) are achieving notably lower mean gradings under the new inspection framework.
• In terms of regions of England, it is largely a case of as you were from the previous inspection schedule. Inner London (3.28) and Outer London (3.05) are well ahead of national average gradings. Not far behind are the West Midlands (2.96) and East of England (2.95) with the South East (2.87) also above the mean across England.
• It follows from this that the further away from London one gets, the lower the average gradings. Again, as in previous years of grading, the North West (2.63), South West (2.68) and North East (2.70) have the lowest mean gradings, closely followed by the East Midlands (2.72) and Yorkshire and Humberside (2.75) who are also well below the England average of 2.80.
• But, of all of these contextual factors, there is one that stands out as the starkest correlate of the level of grading under the new framework and it is… the level of grading under the old framework at the last inspection. Previously outstanding schools lead the way with an average grade of 3.83 (i.e. close to the ‘strong standard’) followed by previously good schools (2.89), then previously requires improvement schools (2.41) and, finally, previously inadequate schools (2.06).
• Finally, Ofsted now publishes data on the quintiles for two measures of deprivation and two measures of additional needs. On deprivation, schools with very high levels of FSM (2.67) and local deprivation (2.71) achieve much lower mean grading than those with very low levels of FSM (3.11) and local deprivation (2.96). On additional needs, schools with very high levels of EHCPs (2.72) and SEND support (2.65) perform well below the mean for all schools, whilst those with very low levels of EHCPs (2.91) and SEND support (3.16) do much better than the mean for all schools.

Established patterns and emerging trends around risk for schools and leaders

• Unsurprisingly, the greatest grading risks for schools are ‘next steps’ around safeguarding. For schools that have had these improvement needs, the mean of all grades is 1.86 and the mean grading for leadership and governance is 1.24.
• More surprisingly, the second most risky set of ‘next steps’ for all schools are those around Personal Development and Wellbeing, which have an overall mean grading of 2.61 and for leadership and governance of 2.60.
• However, it is worth slicing the data here as the picture is very different for secondaries, for which the Personal Development and Wellbeing is the least risky judgement area (2.87). Instead, Attendance and Behaviour (2.61 overall mean) and Inclusion (2.62) occupy the second and third spots of risky ‘next steps’ areas of the framework.
• Leadership and Governance is the fourth most risky judgement area for all schools (2.66 mean overall, and 2.49 for the L&G judgement). But ‘next steps’ around leadership and/or governance for primaries are third on the list of risk (2.67 and 2.50).
• For all schools, curriculum and teaching ‘next steps’ are relatively low risk (2.89 overall mean and 2.84 for the LG judgement), followed by achievement (2.84 and 2.82). In both of these areas, each of the mean judgements is better than that for any identified next step.
• Digging a little deeper to think about the combination of frequency and impact when making a risk assessment, I would argue that the following next steps around leadership and governance are the ones of which schools need to be most aware and wary.
  • Governance challenge – 83 schools with an average grading of 2.48
  • Leader capabilities – Only 24 schools but with an average grade of 2.04
  • Professional learning and staff knowledge – The first covers 89 schools with an average grading of 2.60 and the second 56 schools with a grading of 2.44
  • Improvement planning – 57 schools with an average grading of 2.52
  • Monitoring and evaluation – 132 schools with an average grading of 2.73

Conclusions

As outlined earlier, the new Ofsted inspection framework is now firmly embedded. What we thought we were seeing during the earliest days of its implementation was subject to a lot of data ‘noise’ that is now beginning to quieten down. This post has attempted to outline some of the more established patterns within the data emerging from the many hundreds of Ofsted reports published under the not-quite-so-new framework.

Paradoxically, one of the benefits of being able to see such established patterns is that it helps us to see where there may be some interesting emerging trends that could indicate how the maturing framework is evolving through its contact with the reality of inspecting schools. Hopefully this post has managed to give some indication of these as well.

---

---

Recommended