The Ofsted inspection toolkit

What the Ofsted toolkit is, and where it sits

The State-funded school inspection toolkit is Ofsted’s statement of the standards against which a maintained school or academy in England is graded. Its cover says it “sets out the areas that will be evaluated and graded on inspections of state-funded schools under sections 5 and 8 of the Education Act 2005. It can also be used by leaders to support self-evaluation and continuous improvement.” The version in force is marked “Updated: June 2026 (v2.0)” and “For use on inspections from 7 September 2026”.

Ofsted publishes the toolkit with three companion documents on its page School inspection: toolkit, operating guides and information, and says this guidance “replaced the school inspection handbook from 10 November 2025”. The toolkit is “what inspectors and schools use to discuss the quality of provision on inspection”; the School inspection operating guide for inspectors is “a step-by-step guide for inspectors on how to inspect a school”; the Inspection information for state-funded schools is written for staff, leaders, parents and the public; and a school monitoring operating guide tells inspectors how to monitor schools.

Above them sits the Education inspection framework, for use on inspections from 10 November 2025. The framework sets out the principles of inspection and the evaluation scale; the standards themselves “are in our inspection toolkits”, and there is a toolkit for each remit: registered early years provision, maintained schools and academies, non-association independent schools, further education and skills, and prisons and young offender institutions.

Registered early years settings have their own Early years inspection toolkit, which replaced the early years inspection handbook from 10 November 2025 and was reissued for September 2026. A school’s own early years foundation stage provision is instead given a separate grade within the school inspection, and Ofsted inspects provision for 2- and 3-year-olds in schools as part of a school inspection.

The evaluation areas and the five-point scale

Under the renewed framework, Ofsted grades a school on each of these evaluation areas:

1. Safeguarding – graded ‘met’ or ‘not met’ only
2. Inclusion
3. Curriculum and teaching
4. Achievement
5. Attendance and behaviour
6. Personal development and wellbeing
7. Early years, where applicable
8. Post-16 provision, where applicable
9. Leadership and governance

Every area except safeguarding is graded on a five-point scale. From November 2025 “we no longer provide an overall effectiveness grade for any provider inspected under the framework”. For schools the single headline grade went earlier, in September 2024 (Single headline Ofsted grades scrapped in landmark school reform); Ofsted’s Understanding Ofsted report cards and grades says it no longer gives “one overall judgement, such as ‘good’, ‘outstanding’ or ‘requires improvement’”. The five grades, as the framework defines them:

• Exceptional (highest quality provision) – all the strong standards met, plus the additional standards in the ‘exceptional’ section of the toolkit.
• Strong standard – all the expected standards and all the strong standards met.
• Expected standard – all the standards met, which “includes meeting the legal requirements and the expectations set out in statutory guidance”.
• Needs attention – the expected standard not met “because some aspects of provision are inconsistent, limited in scope or impact and/or not fully meeting the legal requirements”.
• Urgent improvement (lowest quality provision) – the area “needs urgent action to provide a suitable standard of education and/or care”.

The grades are published as a report card. The operating guide builds each grade in steps: does the school reach all the expected standards for the area (a ‘secure fit’), then all the strong standards, and only then is there clear evidence of exceptional practice? One standard not met means that grade cannot be given, though “some minor inconsistencies may lead to priorities for improvement but do not lower the grade”.

How the toolkit is used on inspection

Ofsted’s inspection information says the toolkit “is used to guide conversations, reflect on evidence, and make sure grades reflect the evidence gathered”, and that “we do not expect leaders to produce written evidence to support each standard in each evaluation area of the toolkit.” The operating guide makes the ‘expected standard’ “the starting point for planning your inspection activities”.

1. Notification. For a full inspection the lead inspector usually telephones between 9.30 and 10am on a Monday, and an email letter follows listing the information needed at the start. Full inspections normally last 2 days. Inspectors are His Majesty’s Inspectors or Ofsted Inspectors, who may be serving practitioners.
2. The planning call. Leaders are asked about their context and priorities and “where they believe they currently sit in terms of the 5-point grading scale for each evaluation area”. A senior member of staff may act as nominee, but Ofsted says it is not compulsory to have one.
3. Evidence gathering. Inspectors “collect first-hand evidence of how the school typically operates, mainly through professional conversations and observing, often alongside leaders, the day-to-day work of the school”.
4. Reflection meetings. Throughout the 2 days inspectors review the emerging evidence against the evaluation areas with leaders, and discuss and record any indicative grade.
5. Final feedback. The chair and as many governors or trustees as are available may attend, and the findings should not be made public or shared with parents until the school receives the final report card.
6. The report card. The draft normally arrives within 18 working days; the school has 5 working days to comment on clarity or factual accuracy; Ofsted normally publishes the final report card 5 working days after sending it to the school.

The school must then make sure the parents of each registered pupil receive a copy within 5 working days, a duty the inspection information attributes to section 14(4)(c) of the Education Act 2005.

The second of the operating guide’s three key principles sets the emphasis: “Leadership, inclusion and whether there is an open and positive safeguarding culture are key areas of focus when gathering evidence.” Inspectors, in Ofsted’s words, “will consider what leaders are aiming to achieve, how well they are doing it and how they know it is working.”

Leadership and governance: what the toolkit asks of boards

Under the operating guide, the leadership and governance grade and its four capacity indicators decide whether a school graded ‘urgent improvement’ or ‘not met’ elsewhere goes into special measures, so governors should read this area in full. Among other things, the toolkit says inspectors consider the extent to which governors or trustees:

• are knowledgeable about their statutory duties and carry them out effectively
• support and challenge leaders, “using the best methods to assure themselves of the quality and impact of different aspects of the school’s work”
• understand their role as the responsible body, where applicable, in addressing leaders’ workload and wellbeing
• hold leaders to account for staff professional learning and for provision for disadvantaged pupils, pupils with SEND and others facing barriers

At ‘needs attention’, governors “understand their broad roles and responsibilities but do not typically support and/or challenge leaders well. Their approaches to assuring themselves of the impact of leaders’ work do not give them a precise picture of it.” Among the ‘urgent improvement’ indicators are four about capacity to improve, one of which is that “Governors/trustees do not carry out their statutory core functions”.

Those indicators drive the categories of concern. Under the operating guide’s twin test, a school graded ‘urgent improvement’ in another area, or ‘not met’ for safeguarding, whose leadership and governance is also ‘urgent improvement’ and where a capacity indicator applies, meets the test for special measures; otherwise it requires significant improvement, the category called ‘serious weaknesses’ before November 2025. A school whose only ‘urgent improvement’ grade is leadership and governance also requires significant improvement.

Inspectors meet governors directly. The operating guide tells them to “explore how governors/trustees assure themselves” that processes and policies “are understood and effectively implemented across the school” – in other words, to ask the board how it knows. In an academy trust inspectors “should always meet with the chair of the board of trustees (or their delegate) and as many trustees as are available”, partly without the chief executive. The chair of governors guide covers the role behind the answers.

What evidence leaders and governors are expected to show

The toolkit is explicit that inspection is not a paper exercise: documentation “should be limited to documents relating to the school’s statutory requirements or documents that it produces as part of its normal business processes”, and “We do not need leaders to produce documents specifically for an Ofsted inspection of their school.”

What schools must make available by 8am on the first day of the inspection is listed in the inspection information:

• Strategic documents – improvement priorities or the longer-term vision, minutes of governing body or trustee board meetings, and reports from any external evaluation.
• Behaviour and attendance records – attendance analysis for all groups, pupils taken off roll and why, suspensions and exclusions, bullying and prejudiced behaviour, sexual harassment and violence, and restrictive physical intervention.
• Inclusion information for case sampling, and operational documents such as the timetable and staff list.
• Safeguarding information – the single central record, referrals to the designated safeguarding lead and the local authority, and pupils with open cases or a multi-agency plan.

Schools need not provide “any information beyond what we ask for”, predictions of attainment and progress, pupil-tracking information or a pupil premium plan. There is no required self-evaluation form: “We do not expect schools to have completed any formal self-evaluation using the toolkit. Leaders will not be at a disadvantage if they do not have a written self-evaluation.” A commercial toolkit pack or checklist can help a school prepare, but nothing in Ofsted’s documents requires one.

The obligation that does exist runs the other way. The framework expects providers to be “open, transparent and honest”, which “includes providing evidence – or access to evidence – that enables inspectors to report honestly, fairly and reliably”.

Safeguarding is graded separately against standards that the toolkit says were developed from Keeping children safe in education and Working together to safeguard children, and a ‘not met’ puts a school in a category of concern whatever its other grades. The Ofsted safeguarding evidence guide sets out the day-one checks, and the statutory policies guide lists the documents a school must hold.

“How do you know?” and the answer in a group chat

The toolkit grades leadership on what leaders and governors know and how they know it: governors assuring themselves of the quality and impact of the school’s work, leaders showing, in the safeguarding standards, that they “know and are assured that policies and procedures are understood, applied and have a positive impact on pupils”, and both attending to workload and wellbeing. Each of those is evidenced, in the end, by decisions and the conversations that led to them.

In many schools a good share of those conversations happen in a staff WhatsApp group. The deputy head asking at nine in the evening whether anyone has seen the Year 9 attendance figures. The chair messaging the headteacher about a parent’s complaint before the board has met. A leadership group agreeing to pull back a marking policy because staff are drowning, after a governor asked the question that prompted it. That is leadership and governance doing exactly what the toolkit describes, and often the only record that it happened.

Inspectors ask for what a school produces “as part of its normal business processes”. A decision reached in a group chat is part of the school’s normal business, and the school cannot produce it: the messages sit on personal handsets, in an app the school does not control, belonging to people who may have left by the time anyone asks. When the answer to “how do you know?” is “we discussed it”, the minute says less than the chat did, and the chat is not the school’s to show.

That is a records question more than an inspection one: the same messages can fall within a subject access request, a complaint or an employment claim. ComplyChat gives those conversations a channel the school owns, where everyone is told on joining that it is on the record, and on paid plans the lasting record files into the school’s own Microsoft 365 under its own retention rules. It is not the answer to most of this guide: it grades nothing, it is not a self-evaluation or an inspection pack, it is not a safeguarding case-management system or an MIS, and it does not replace board minutes. The free personal tier keeps three calendar months of history and does not meet a retention duty.

The question for your next leadership or governing board meeting: if an inspector asked how the board knew about the last decision that mattered, could you show the conversation that made it, or only the minute that followed?

Questions people ask

What are the 5 new Ofsted grades?

The five Ofsted grades under the renewed education inspection framework are exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention and urgent improvement, from highest to lowest. They apply to each evaluation area separately; safeguarding is graded only ‘met’ or ‘not met’, and there is no overall effectiveness grade.

What is the current Ofsted framework for inspections?

The current framework is Ofsted’s renewed education inspection framework, for use on inspections from 10 November 2025, covering state schools, non-association independent schools, further education and skills providers and registered early years settings in England. For state-funded schools it is applied through the school inspection toolkit and operating guide for use from 7 September 2026.

What are the changes in the Ofsted inspection framework for September 2026?

For schools, the September 2026 changes are to the toolkit, operating guides and inspection information; the education inspection framework for use from 10 November 2025 still applies. Ofsted’s Summary of changes lists added or updated toolkit wording on, among other things, leaders’ and governors’ whole-school approach to safeguarding, allergy safety policies, mobile phone policies and records of disqualification under the Childcare Act 2006, and a clarified explanation in the operating guide of the reasons for placing a school in a category of concern.

How long can a school go without an Ofsted inspection?

A school in England must be inspected within 5 school years from the end of the school year in which its previous inspection took place, and Ofsted says schools are inspected approximately once every 4 years unless they are in a monitoring programme. Ofsted may inspect at any time if it has concerns.

What will Ofsted ask in 2026?

In the planning call Ofsted asks leaders about the school’s context, their priorities, how they have assessed the impact of their actions, and where they believe the school sits on the 5-point scale for each evaluation area. Throughout, inspectors consider what leaders are aiming to achieve, how well they are doing it and how they know it is working.

Where to read the official guidance

Ofsted’s page School inspection: toolkit, operating guides and information holds the current toolkit, operating guide, monitoring guide and inspection information. The Education inspection framework (EIF) page holds the framework and its summary of changes. Registered early years settings use the separate early years toolkit.

Read the toolkit’s leadership and governance section before the planning call, and the list of documents before the phone rings. This page summarises Ofsted’s published documents and is not advice on a particular inspection; Ofsted says it will update the toolkit, usually on an annual basis, so check the version date before relying on any detail here.