Ofsted inspections explained: grades, report cards and what changed

How Ofsted inspects state schools in England, why there are three different kinds of outcome since 2024 — overall grades, sub-grades only, and the new report cards — and how to read them.

Checked 18 October 2026 against the official sources listed at the end.

Ofsted inspects state-funded schools in England. Its grading has changed twice since 2024, so schools inspected at different times have different kinds of outcome. On ABC Edu we show exactly what Ofsted published for each school, with the date, and never convert or combine grades.

Before September 2024: an overall grade

Under the education inspection framework that ran from 1 September 2019, a graded inspection gave an overall effectiveness grade:

• 1 Outstanding
• 2 Good
• 3 Requires improvement
• 4 Inadequate

It also gave key judgements for quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management (plus early years and sixth form where the school had them).

Ofsted also carried out shorter ungraded inspections of good and outstanding schools. These don’t give new grades; the outcome says something like “School remains Good”.

September 2024 to November 2025: no overall grade

On 2 September 2024 the government announced that “Single headline grades for schools will be scrapped with immediate effect”. For inspections that year, “parents will see four grades across the existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development and leadership & management”.

In Ofsted’s data, overall effectiveness for these inspections is recorded as “Not judged”. On ABC Edu they appear as “Graded inspection (no overall grade)”.

Report cards from November 2025

Ofsted’s renewed framework started on 10 November 2025. Schools now get a report card, with no single overall grade.

• Each evaluation area is graded on a 5-point scale: exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, urgent improvement.
• The areas are inclusion; curriculum and teaching; achievement; attendance and behaviour; personal development and well-being; leadership and governance; plus early years and post-16 provision where the school has them.
• Safeguarding is reported separately as met or not met.

What the words mean, in Ofsted’s own words:

• “The ‘expected standard’ is just that – it means the school … is doing everything that it should be doing … It’s a high standard.”
• “‘Strong standard’ marks out excellent, consistent work.”
• “Exceptional” is awarded “only … when we see practice that is among the very best nationally”.
• “‘Needs attention’ is an indication that there is work to be done to reach the ‘expected standard’. It’s not a ‘fail’.”

Ofsted will usually come back for a monitoring inspection if any area is graded “needs attention” or the school is placed in a category of concern. If a later monitoring inspection regrades an area, Ofsted’s data shows the most recent grade.

Categories of concern

Ofsted can place a school in special measures or find that it requires significant improvement. Under the old framework, serious weaknesses was also used.

• A school “requires significant improvement because it is performing significantly less well than it might in all the circumstances be reasonably expected to perform”.
• A school requires special measures when “it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement”.

Under the renewed framework, a school leaves a category when no area is graded “urgent improvement” and safeguarding is “met”.

How often schools are inspected

“Schools are inspected approximately once every 4 years, except if they are in one of our monitoring programmes”, and by law all schools must be inspected “within 5 school years from the end of the school year in which the previous inspection took place”.

So many schools haven’t had a report card yet: in the data we use, 3,188 of about 21,900 open state-funded schools had one by 30 September 2026. Ofsted also warns that the schools inspected in November 2025 “were volunteers”, that early outcomes “may not be representative”, and that “only a small proportion of all schools” have been inspected so far.

Predecessor schools

A grade belongs to one school, identified by its unique reference number (URN). When a school reopens under a new URN — for example when it becomes an academy — Ofsted says “the inspection history and any grades of the predecessor provision cannot, in law, transfer to the new one”. Ofsted’s data flags inspections of a predecessor school, and ABC Edu labels them clearly.

Independent schools

The Ofsted data we use covers state-funded schools only. Independent schools are inspected by Ofsted or by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). Get Information about Schools records which inspectorate each independent school uses, and we show that on its page.

Read the full report

The grades are a summary. Each school page links to its reports on Ofsted’s website, which explain the reasons behind each grade. Always check the date: a newer inspection may have been published since our last update.

Sources

1. Ofsted: state-funded school inspections and outcomes, management information (Guidance and Using this data sheets) (opens in a new tab)
2. DfE press release: Single headline Ofsted grades scrapped in landmark school reform (2 September 2024) (opens in a new tab)
3. Ofsted: Understanding Ofsted report cards and grades (opens in a new tab)
4. Ofsted confirms changes to education inspection and unveils new-look report cards (9 September 2025) (opens in a new tab)
5. Ofsted: School inspection toolkit, operating guide and information (opens in a new tab)
6. Ofsted: Using Ofsted logos and copyright (opens in a new tab)