Who are Ofsted?
Ofsted is the Office for Standards in education, Children's Services and Skills. Ofsted inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. Ofsted use the Common Inspection Framework to assess and evaluate the service provided.
What is the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework?
The Education Inspection Framework was devised by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector (HMCI) for use from 2019. It sets out the principles that apply to inspection and the main judgements that inspectors make when conducting inspections of maintained schools, academies, non-association independent schools, further education and skills providers and registered early years settings.
What do Ofsted do?
Ofsted Inspection provides independent, external evaluation that includes a diagnosis of what should improve. It is based on gathering a range of evidence that is evaluated against an inspection framework and takes full account of Ofsted's policies and relevant legislation in areas such as safeguarding, equality and diversity.
Judgements made by Inspectors
The education inspection framework ensures that a coherent set of judgements are made across the different education, skills and early years settings. The methods adopted by inspectors to gather evidence and the main criteria used by inspectors to make judgements are set out in the different remit handbooks.
The grading scale used for Inspector Judgements
A four-point grading scale will be used in all inspections to make the principal judgements:
Grade 1: outstanding
Grade 2: good
Grade 3: requires improvement
Grade 4: inadequate
