Readiness for Inspection: Insights for school leaders

Is your school in the inspection window? Do you know which aspects of the inspection framework carry the greatest risk for schools and their leaders? Have you wondered what inspection reports can tell you that will help your preparation? You are in the right place.

SSAT has tracked every one of more than 22,000 “need to improve” bullet points in every Ofsted report published for schools inspected since September 2023. The results are fascinating and provide the richest source of information about the inspection process available to school leaders.

We will share our insights from every inspection carried out in 2023-24 and 2024-25 and give you an indication of what this means for your school, recognising variations across settings.

By paying attention to the different contextual factors of schools that have been inspected we will give you an unprecedented level of insight into where to focus your improvement efforts.

Our insights demonstrate how inspection teams are making sense of turbulent times. We will explain what impact the ‘Big Listen’ and the proposals for a new inspection framework are already having upon inspections, and what they look likely to mean for the future.

This webinar will give school leaders in all settings insights about what to expect from the inspection process to help focus their preparations, including:

• Headline insights: What inspection data tells us about the improvement needs of schools, and the importance of different facets of the inspection framework.
• Sector insights: How improvement needs vary for primaries, secondaries, through schools, special schools, pupil referral units, sixth forms and independent schools.
• Risk insights: Which need to improve comments carry the greatest risks of lower or declining inspection outcomes for schools, particularly around school leadership.
• Leadership insights: Why inspection outcomes show that leadership matters but illustrate the importance of leadership remaining unseen on inspection reports.
• Emergent trends: How insights in the finer level data from inspections might provide us with guidance about future inspection themes in a time of significant change.
• Regional insights: How differences in region- and county-level data from inspections differ from national trends and what this might mean for school leaders.

This webinar is recommended for:

• School and college leaders (from any sector) approaching or within the inspection window.
• Governors, trustees, MAT leaders and LA advisors seeking to support schools and colleges.
• Colleagues in organisations providing support services for schools within and across regions.

Host information

Dr Keven Bartle, Senior Education Lead, SSAT

Keven has been a teacher for almost three decades and was headteacher at a richly diverse secondary school in London for nine years. Through his career, Keven has been committed to the power of education for social justice and transformation, working in schools where staff make a difference to the lives of children, families and communities.

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