Our recent publications

Below is some of our other recent publications that we think you will find useful:

BLOG: What we’ve learnt from pilot inspections

 Since September, we’ve carried out pilot inspections in 115 schools and taken time to carefully review the findings. Our National Director for Education, Lee Owston, sets out what we have found in this blog.

BLOG: The role of data on school inspections

In November we released information sets to schools that help frame our inspection activity. These are called the Inspection Data Summary Report (IDSR).

It has always been the case that data is only the starting point for inspection. We do not make grading decisions on the basis of data alone – but the data can help suggest areas of focus to be discussed between inspectors and leaders. Read our recently published blog where we explain what’s changed and describe how we use data on inspection.  

We also ran a webinar on this subject, which will be published on our YouTube channel soon.

Updates to school inspections guidance

In November we published our new school monitoring operating guide for inspectors. This guidance for inspections of state-funded schools and academies replaces the monitoring handbook, which has been withdrawn.

For non-association independent schools, the operating guide for additional inspections will be published later this month on this page and this replaces the additional inspections handbook.

Whilst the guides are for the use of inspectors, we also make them available for everyone. Both are to be read in conjunction with their respective inspection information documents, which can be found on the same landing page on the Ofsted website.

We want to be as transparent as possible. We also publish our inspector training videos here.

Our Annual Report

Earlier this month we published our annual report where we highlighted disparities in outcomes for disadvantaged and vulnerable children across the education system. We also addressed the often-linked issues of poor attendance and disruptive behaviour.

You can read about the report here