Standard

Public involvement and engagement strategy

Updated 30 April 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

Ofsted is committed to publishing timely, relevant, high-quality statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

We want our statistics to support delivery of the Ofsted strategy, helping to: 

• underpin decision-making at all levels within and beyond government 

• inform our broad user community 

• enhance the public’s understanding of services we inspect and regulate 

• deliver insight to support the development and evaluation of policy and operations

User engagement focuses on continuing and improving the relationship we have with our users. Good user engagement helps us to better understand our users and their needs. It ensures that we are responsive to emerging needs and helps us to better identify gaps in knowledge and evidence. It also enables us to shape new and existing statistical products ensuring they are relevant and fit for user purpose, delivering products with maximum impact and value.

We have produced this statement in line with the Government Statistical Service (GSS) User engagement strategy for statistics. This strategy sets out plans for a sustained dialogue between producers, users and potential users of statistics. The intent is for user engagement to be embedded into an organisation’s wider engagement activities and actively implemented throughout the statistical development, production and review cycle.

In response to this, we have developed our public involvement and engagement strategy to focus on the goals of the GSS user engagement strategy:

• Collaboration – collaborating across boundaries to offer a more coherent user experience

• Capability – building capability and equipping producers of statistics with the practical skills and tools to deliver effective user engagement activities

• Culture – strengthening our culture and ensuring user engagement is an ongoing and essential part of a statistics producer’s role

Our commitment to users

We will be clear about the production and release of our statistics by:

• committing to the principles of release detailed in our release practice policy

• publishing our revisions and corrections policy

• publishing methodology and quality reports for our statistics

We will meet the needs of our users by:

• continuing to develop knowledge of our users, potential users and their needs

• continuing to design accessible statistical products for all

• using a variety of methods to share and publicise our statistics

• providing a variety of opportunities for users to give us their views

• consulting with users on developments and changes to our statistical methodologies, publications and publication processes

• responding quickly and accurately to questions and enquiries from our users

This policy statement sets out how we intend to meet these commitments.

Embedding user engagement

We want to achieve the GSS’s ambition to embed user engagement within the statistical development, production and review cycle. To achieve this, we have set ourselves goals.

Collaboration

We will maintain collaboration within Ofsted, both across our statistical production teams and with other divisions within the department, for example the communications team. We will also work more collaboratively across the GSS, particularly with statistical producers in other departments.

We will share details of how each team currently engages with users to share good practice and ideas. We will identify cross-cutting themes in publications and consider how we could co-ordinate user engagement more effectively across teams.

We will share the public involvement and engagement strategy across Ofsted. We will work with teams across Ofsted, not just those who produce statistics, to identify users of Ofsted research, statistics and publications.

We will collaborate with other government departments so that users do not have to understand the structures of government before they can engage. To this end, we will be an active part of the cross-government Children and Education theme group facilitating collaboration with other statistical producers, including the Department for Education, Office for Students, Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation, the Office for National Statistics and the devolved administrations.

Capability

We have a dedicated user engagement group, led by our user engagement champions with representatives from statistical production teams, to discuss user engagement and share ideas, best practice and resources across teams.

Our user engagement champions will attend cross-government networking events and share ideas and good practice from and with other government departments.

We will continue to develop analysts’ skills in improving publication accessibility and adopting other user engagement methods. When developing new products, we will incorporate user-centred design.

Culture

We set expectations for how every team should carry out user engagement and include these targets in individual, team and division objectives. We monitor how effective the activities are for improving user engagement.

We strive to ensure that all statistical colleagues, including those not working on official statistics and management information, know the importance of user engagement.

Understanding our users

It is important to understand who our users are, how they use our statistics and what questions they are trying to answer, so that our statistics best fit their intended uses.

Who are our users?

We know our users are drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and have varying needs, from requiring access to raw data to drawing insights from statistical reports.

We know that those accessing and using our products include:

• inspectors
• policy-makers
• analysts
• other government departments
• parliament
• the media
• the public
• the providers we inspect and regulate
• sector advisory groups
• the voluntary sector and charities
• international users
• academics, researchers and students

Understanding user needs

As well as knowing who our users are, we need to understand their needs. Understanding how our statistics are used is essential to maximising their public value and ensuring that users can make sound and informed judgements.

We regularly monitor the usage of our statistics through reviewing GOV.UK and X analytics. This will help us understand the relative popularity of our various outputs and formats, as well as allowing us to assess the impact of trialling new methods to engage with users.

In addition to monitoring usage, we will attempt to measure how our statistics are quoted within other publications, such as press articles and research. We hope to engage with some of the organisations that have quoted our statistics to understand how we can better meet their needs.

We will continue to provide a named contact on all of our statistical releases. In addition, we will carry out an annual review of each of our releases to ensure users who have subscribed to topics receive relevant content. We will also use community discussion groups, such as StatsUserNetwork

We will regularly review themes in the queries we receive. This includes parliamentary questions (PQs), press queries, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and mailbox queries. Where we receive regular requests on the same topic, we will consider whether this information should be shared more widely within our publications or products.

Access to our statistics

Our statistics are found on the Statistics at Ofsted page of GOV.UK. Each publication provides contact details for the responsible statistician and we encourage all users to provide feedback.

Our statistical first releases include a commentary that is impartial, insightful and informative. Statistical publications are accompanied by a methodology and quality report to help users understand the data sources, data quality and definitions. We aim to make our statistics accessible to a range of different audiences in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and our accessible documents policy; we release them in formats that encourage analysis and reuse. Ofsted statisticians work proactively with the communications experts to ensure our data is reusable, providing users with supporting charts and tables.

We aim to use a range of digital tools and social media channels to disseminate and improve access to our statistics. This includes blogs to explain some of the more technical aspects of our work. Our official statistics releases are currently announced via the main @Ofstednews X account.

It is important that the data used to produce our reports is freely available, transparent and accessible. We have based the format of our releases on the accessibility guidance published by the Government Analysis Function and the content design guidance for GOV.UK from the Government Digital Service. Our statistics are disaggregated to a level that is reliable and robust whilst adhering to disclosure rules.

All media enquiries about the contents of a specific release should be directed to Ofsted press officers. All other users should use the email address provided in the statistical first release. If users request data not contained in existing Ofsted statistical publications, requests will normally be treated under the Freedom of Information Act.

Consulting and communicating

Where possible, we will consult users when we develop new products and when we plan to make significant changes to our statistical methodologies, publications or publication processes.

Consultations will be communicated via the GOV.UK website. We will publicise any consultations through our social media. Ofsted will respond to every formal consultation providing a summary of all responses, the outcomes of the consultation and the rationale for the decisions made. Outcomes of consultations will be published on GOV.UK.

Where we plan to make more minor changes, we will inform users in advance via GOV.UK and invite feedback on our plans.

We will treat all feedback received with respect and consider it together with data, resource and legal constraints.

Changes to statistics due to the renewed education inspection framework

In 2024, Ofsted ran the Big Listen, the largest consultation in Ofsted’s history. The response to the Big Listen set out the actions we would take to address what we heard from professionals, children and learners, parents, carers and the public. Following this, we ran a further consultation in 2025 with a focus on improving the way Ofsted inspects education. Alongside the response to the consultation, Ofsted also published a renewed education inspection framework (EIF) for early years, state-funded schools and academies, non-association independent schools, and further education and skills remits. This introduced new evaluation areas for inspection and a new 5-point grading scale that forms part of the new report cards given to providers from inspection. This replaces the previous ‘overall effectiveness’ grade and the previous 4-point scale used under the previous EIF. The new framework has been used on inspection for most providers since 10 November 2025.

How we plan to consult with users of official statistics in development

Due to the renewal of the EIF, which introduced new report cards and grades for the providers we inspect, the data we collect and present is different from previous years. These changes will require us to amend our statistical publications. For inspections of state-funded schools and further education and skills, we have already published the first management information that reports on outcomes following inspection.

Later in 2026, we will publish the first official statistics reporting on inspection outcomes of the renewed EIF. The official statistics reporting on renewed EIF outcomes will be published with the designation ‘official statistics in development’. Once users have had the opportunity to review these releases, we want to understand whether the new approach meets their needs. We intend to publish a survey link alongside each of these official statistics releases for users to provide insightful feedback to help us improve future publications.

In line with the Office for Statistics Regulation’s guidance on producing official statistics in development, with each release of official statistics in development we will:

• publish an upfront description at the beginning of the official statistics in development publication covering:
  • an account of the methods used and quality of the statistics
  • how we intend to involve users and keep them informed about the development and its progress
• publish a development plan outlining who, why, what, when