Schools are graded on a five-point scale — exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, urgent improvement — across curriculum and teaching, achievement, inclusion, personal development and wellbeing, attendance and behaviour, and leadership and governance. Safeguarding is judged separately as met or not met. Early years and post-16 provision are evaluated additionally where a school has them.
What actually changed
The single-word overall effectiveness judgement — outstanding, good, requires improvement, inadequate — was removed by the government in September 2024. What replaced it took until November 2025 to arrive, following Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation and a further consultation on the proposed model.
Ofsted began inspecting under the new framework on 10 November 2025. Between that date and the Christmas break it prioritised schools that had volunteered for early inspection; all state-funded schools became eligible from 1 December 2025. Initial teacher education and non-association independent school inspections moved to the new model from January 2026.
The six evaluation areas
Ofsted originally proposed eight areas and settled on six, merging curriculum with teaching, and attendance with behaviour.
| Evaluation area | Broadly covers |
|---|---|
| Curriculum and teaching | What is taught, in what order, how well it is taught and how teaching is adapted |
| Achievement | What pupils know, remember and can do, including outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND |
| Inclusion | How well the school identifies and meets the needs of disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils, including those with SEND |
| Personal development and wellbeing | Character, citizenship, careers, enrichment and pupil wellbeing |
| Attendance and behaviour | Attendance, persistent and severe absence, suspensions, behaviour and the culture around it |
| Leadership and governance | Strategic direction, staff workload and wellbeing, governance oversight and compliance |
Schools with early years or post-16 provision receive additional evaluations for those phases. Safeguarding sits outside the scale and is recorded as met or not met.
The grades
| Grade | What it signals |
|---|---|
| Exceptional | Practice that stands out nationally and is worth sharing widely. Intentionally rare. All “strong standard” criteria must be met first. |
| Strong standard | Consistent, embedded and highly impactful practice that goes meaningfully beyond expectations. |
| Expected standard | The baseline. Reflects the statutory, professional and non-statutory guidance schools are already expected to follow. |
| Needs attention | Work to do to reach the expected standard. Normally triggers a full reinspection within around 12 months. |
| Urgent improvement | The lowest grade. Ofsted has indicated monitoring inspections each term following publication of the report card. |
Ofsted has been explicit that the new grades do not map onto the old ones. “Needs attention” is not a rebadged “requires improvement”, and “exceptional” is not “outstanding”. Any internal tracker, governor report or trust dashboard that converts between them is producing a misleading number.
Secure fit, not best fit
This is the change with the biggest practical consequence and the one most often skimmed over.
Under the previous framework inspectors used a best fit approach: they weighed the overall picture and decided which descriptor it most resembled. Under the 2025 framework Ofsted has moved to secure fit — every standard within a grade must be met before that grade can be awarded.
What that means in practice: a school with genuinely exceptional practice in four aspects of an evaluation area and a gap in the fifth does not average out. The gap holds the grade down. Evidence-gathering starts at the expected standard, and inspectors only look at strong standard criteria once all expected standard criteria are met.
The implication for school leaders is uncomfortable but clarifying: consistency now matters more than peaks. A department that is superb in Year 10 and thin in Year 8 is a consistency problem, not a strength to showcase.
The toolkits
Ofsted publishes an inspection toolkit setting out the criteria for each evaluation area and the evidence inspectors will gather. The toolkits are built around the expected standard, and Ofsted has said they are drawn from statutory, professional and non-statutory guidance schools already follow — so schools are not expected to create new evidence or do additional work to prepare.
That last sentence is worth reading carefully. Ofsted is not asking for a new folder. It is asking for the evidence that should already exist as a by-product of running the school well. Where schools struggle is not that they lack the practice; it is that the practice leaves no trace anyone can retrieve at short notice.
What this means for your systems
The framework change is a data question as much as a pedagogy question. Three things became materially harder to evidence:
- Consistency across a cohort or department, because secure fit punishes the gap rather than rewarding the peak.
- Inclusion as its own graded area, which means outcomes and provision for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND can no longer be described in general terms inside a quality of education narrative. See inclusion.
- Narrative alongside grades, because every grade on the report card carries a short written explanation. Schools that can show the reasoning behind their own self-evaluation are in a stronger conversation than schools presenting a number.
Edves is built so that curriculum coverage, assessment, attendance, SEND provision and teaching observation all sit on one pupil record, which means the evidence for an evaluation area can be produced from what the school already does rather than assembled in the 48 hours after the notification call. See report cards and grading for how each area maps to data.
Accountability beyond inspection
The DfE published its own consultation outcome on school accountability alongside the Ofsted reforms. Structural intervention remains the default position for schools in the most serious categories, with RISE teams taking a larger role for “stuck” schools. Inspection outcomes still carry high stakes; the change is in how the picture is described, not in whether it matters.
What a sensible response looks like
- Re-map your self-evaluation to the six areas. Most SEFs are still structured around the previous framework's headings, which now cut across the report card awkwardly.
- Brief governors and trustees on the grading structure, including the point that old and new grades are not comparable.
- Audit for consistency rather than for excellence. Under secure fit, find the weakest link in each area.
- Check safeguarding against a binary threshold. There is no partial credit.
- Plan the parent communication for a report card, before you receive one. Parents will read a six-grade card differently from a single word.