Official Statistics

Methodology: state-funded schools inspections and outcomes as at 31 March 2026

Published 24 June 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

This document contains the methodology relevant to our official statistics release of state-funded school inspections and outcomes data, which we publish twice a year.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly on inspectioninsight@ofsted.gov.uk with any comments about how we meet these standards, or if you have any questions or feedback about our release. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

Users can find out more about how Ofsted applies the code of practice for statistics to our statistical releases on our Ofsted standards for official statistics page.

Changes to inspection frameworks and comparability

We introduced the education inspection framework (EIF) in September 2019. A renewed version of this framework was then introduced in November 2025, following a consultation.

Ofsted began inspecting state-funded schools under the renewed EIF on 10 November 2025. The renewed EIF uses a 5-point scale to grade up to 8 evaluation areas, and safeguarding is evaluated on a ‘met’/‘not met’ scale. These are distinct from the judgements under the original EIF and so are not directly comparable.

The 8 evaluation areas under the renewed EIF are:

• Inclusion
• Curriculum and teaching
• Achievement
• Attendance and behaviour
• Personal development and wellbeing
• Early years
• Post-16 provision
• Leadership and governance

The ‘most recent inspections’ dataset shows outcomes from each school’s last inspection, regardless of which framework the inspection was carried out under. It therefore contains outcomes for schools inspected under the original EIF (between 1 September 2019 and 9 November 2025), as well as those inspected under the renewed EIF.

Comparing inspection outcomes across academic years

The mixture of schools we inspect can vary year to year, and this will therefore affect the outcomes that we see. The inspections carried out in any single year are not designed to be representative of all schools nationally, and outcomes should therefore not be compared across years.

A series of policy changes means there is no single measure available for all schools that can be used to compare schools. In addition to introducing the renewed EIF, the final year of the original EIF saw the removal of the overall effectiveness grade from inspection judgements. The ‘Most recent inspections’ dataset will show an overall effectiveness outcome of ‘Not judged’ for any graded inspection under the original EIF that took place between 1 September 2024 and 9 November 2025, after the overall effectiveness judgement had been removed.

Methodology

This official statistics release reports on the outcomes of state-funded school inspections that we carried out within the most recent reporting period. It also includes the details of all open schools, with their most recent inspection outcomes under the EIF, where available. If we have not yet inspected a school in its current form (such as a new academy), we will include the EIF inspection outcomes of its predecessor school to give a more comprehensive view of the sector. This release covers all state-funded schools in England.

Data in this official statistics series is from inspections carried out under sections 5 and 8 of the Education Act 2005.

We present and analyse:

• inspections that have occurred within the academic year being reported when published by the given date

• the most recent EIF inspection outcomes of all open schools as at the end of the reporting period, including details of schools that we have yet to inspect for the first time. When an open school has not yet been inspected, we will include the inspection outcomes of its predecessor school to give a more comprehensive view of the sector

The cut-off period for including published inspection reports in the statistics is 1 calendar month after the end of the reporting period. This helps to ensure that most inspections carried out within the reporting period have report cards that are published and reflected in the official statistics. We do this to minimise bias. For instance, inspection report cards of those schools judged to be in a category of concern undergo additional moderation checks and may otherwise miss a shorter reporting period. We do not usually publish inspection report cards during school holidays, so the timing of school holidays can affect the proportion of report cards that are published by the cut-off date for the statistics.

Under exceptional circumstances, we may withhold or withdraw publication of an inspection report card. Outcomes of withheld or withdrawn inspection report cards are not included in any of the datasets.

Ofsted reports on various phases of education, which include different types of establishment. Throughout this release, we use the term ‘schools’ to cover all local authority maintained schools, state-funded academies, free schools and non-maintained special schools in England that section 5 of the Education Act 2005 requires us to inspect.

When early years provision is governed by a school, or the school provides care for children aged 2 or over, we inspect it as part of a full inspection and include the outcomes in the school’s statistical release. Early years provision that cares for children aged under 2 needs to be registered on the Early Years Register and will have an early years inspection by Ofsted. We report on these outcomes under our early years official statistics.

The selection process

Schools are not inspected with equal regularity. Ofsted must inspect all schools to which section 5 of the Education Act 2005 (as amended) applies within prescribed intervals. Ofsted’s policies on the timing and type of inspection a school receives have changed over time.

The result of this is that the schools inspected in a particular academic year are unlikely to be representative of schools as a whole. This may also affect the comparability of school inspection outcomes between years. Where multiple years of data are presented, this is for information rather than to make any inferences about changes in the sector over time.

Data

Ofsted data

We extract information on inspection outcomes from our administrative systems. As part of the renewed EIF, we introduced a new system to record the inspection grades. While we aim to produce the highest-quality statistics, there are occasional differences between the data on the administrative system and the final inspection report. Reasons for this include changes being made during the quality assurance process.

Since October 2018, the publication dates for inspection reports/report cards shown on our statistical publications have been 1 day earlier than those displayed on the Ofsted website.

We moderate all inspection reports when a school is judged to be in a category of concern (special measures or requires significant improvement). This may result in some inspection reports being published after the publication cut-off date required for inclusion in the provisional release. Therefore, provisional statistics are likely to slightly under-represent schools that have been placed in a category of concern. In addition, when it appears that further evidence may be required to secure the inspection evidence base, this will delay publication of an inspection report card.

Other data sources

We get data indicating whether schools are open or have closed, their type, phase of education, religious character, religious ethos and any links to predecessor schools from the Department for Education (DfE)’s Get Information about Schools (GIAS) database.

Data is sourced from GIAS at the end of the reporting period. For inspections in the academic year, we provide information about the school on the day of inspection. For the most recent inspections, we provide information about the school as at the end of the reporting period.

The DfE considers the quality of data on GIAS to be good. While there can be slight delays in changes coming through to the systems, these are corrected in later updates.

Methods and quality

The average production time for this official statistics release is approximately 6 weeks. This time includes obtaining and cleaning the data, drafting findings, quality assuring all outputs, securing internal sign-off and uploading the information to GOV.UK.

Other sources of similar data

No comparable data is published by other organisations that produce official statistics or accredited official statistics for school inspections in England.

For the devolved nations, inspections are carried out and reviews and reports published by the following:

• for Scotland, HMIE

• for Wales, Estyn

• for Northern Ireland, Education and Training Inspectorate

We also produce monthly management information on the outcomes of school inspections.

Several third parties provide interactive tools that display publicly available Ofsted inspection judgements. Some of these may be collated using web scraping to extract inspection outcomes from published inspection reports. We cannot comment on the quality of these datasets.

Who is this release for

Information in this release has 5 distinct purposes:

• it allows media outlets to use our key findings to inform the public about the quality of schools across the country and in local areas

• it allows users to track movement in the education sector, and to monitor the quality of provision available at a national and local level and across provider types

• it gives an accurate picture of the quality of provision, which influences policy decisions about the location and quality of school provision

• it helps to identify areas of weak performance, which assists the DfE, local authorities and multi-academy trusts in developing policies and strategies to address performance-related issues

• in Ofsted, analysis of inspection outcomes informs the development of the inspection framework and underpins policies to improve standards; also, the key messages in the official statistics contribute towards the findings in HMCI’s Annual Report to Parliament

Official statistics in development

Due to the introduction of the renewed EIF, these statistics have been published as official statistics in development. This section outlines our commitment to remove the ‘in development’ label and return this release to an official statistics release.

Who

Our official statistics in development will be developed by analysts within Ofsted. We are consulting with users to gain feedback on our official statistics in development releases.

Why

Development of these official statistics releases is needed in order to help users best understand outcomes from the renewed EIF, and to provide users with an opportunity to contribute their views on what we include. The changes to the framework mean that many of the old analyses have had to be removed. At the same time, we have added new analysis which we hope will be helpful.

What

We are running a survey to collect feedback from users of our official statistics. We will also consult with key stakeholders internally and externally to ensure that the products deliver useful information and insights. The responses to our survey and our wider consultation will inform future development of these statistics.

When

As the renewed EIF started in November 2025 and we have already published data from this framework in several management information releases, we intend to remove the ‘in development’ designation from our next official statistics release in November 2026. This will give us enough time to evaluate fully whether the releases are delivering what is required by our users.

Glossary

Definitions of terms are in the statistical glossary.