Guidance

Section 8 school inspection handbook

Guidance for Ofsted inspectors carrying out school inspections under section 8 of the Education Act 2005.

• From: Ofsted
• Published: 14 May 2019
• Last updated: 11 July 2022
  Show all updates

  1. 11 July 2022

     Clarified that the section 5 and section 8 handbooks have now been merged into a new school inspection handbook and a school monitoring handbook, effective from September 2022. See 'summary of changes' for more details.

  2. 14 April 2022

     See 'Summary of changes' for details.

  3. 1 September 2021

     Removed old guidance: the September 2021 handbook is now in force.

  4. 28 June 2021

     See 'Summary of changes' document.

  5. 19 April 2021

     Edits throughout: see 'Summary of changes' for details.

  6. 1 November 2019

     Updated with minor changes following the launch of the education inspection framework (EIF).

  7. 2 September 2019

     Updated with minor changes as we launch the education inspection framework (EIF).

  8. 14 May 2019

     First published.

This publication was withdrawn on 1 September 2022

We have merged the former section 5 and section 8 handbooks into a new school inspection handbook, which covers graded, ungraded and urgent inspections, and a monitoring handbook for monitoring inspections.

Applies to England

Documents

School inspection handbook: section 8

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Summary of changes

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Details

Section 8 inspections do not fall under section 5 of the Education Act 2005 (read the section 5 handbook). These include:

• inspections of schools previously judged to be good (unless they’ve changed significantly or are flagged by our risk assessment process)
• inspections of special schools, pupil referral units and maintained nursery schools previously judged to be outstanding
• monitoring inspections for schools previously judged inadequate or requires improvement
• inspections where we have a particular cause for concern (for example, about behaviour and attitudes, safeguarding or leadership)