Understanding Ofsted grades
Ofsted changed how it grades schools in November 2025, so you’ll see two kinds of results on this site, sometimes three. Here’s how to read each one.
Report cards (from November 2025)
Schools inspected under the new system get a report card instead of one overall grade. Each area of the school gets its own grade:
- Curriculum and teaching
- Achievement
- Attendance and behaviour
- Personal development and wellbeing
- Inclusion
- Leadership and governance
- Early years (where the school has it)
- Post-16 provision (where the school has it)
Each area is graded on a five-point scale:
- Exceptional
- Among the very best in the country in this area. Ofsted gives it rarely.
- Strong standard
- Goes beyond what Ofsted expects, consistently.
- Expected standard
- Does what Ofsted expects of every school. The most common grade.
- Needs attention
- Some things in this area need to improve.
- Urgent improvement
- Serious weaknesses that need to be put right quickly.
Safeguarding, which means keeping children safe, isn’t graded on the scale. It’s either met or not met.
Most schools get a mix of grades, and Expected standard is the most common. Of the 3,189 schools with a report card so far, the share getting each grade for curriculum and teaching, from Exceptional to Urgent improvement, is under 1%, 16%, 62%, 20%, 1%.
The new grades can’t be translated into the old ones. A school that was Good before and now gets Expected standard hasn’t necessarily got worse: the scale and what inspectors look for are different.
Categories of concern
When a school has serious problems, Ofsted can place it in a category of concern: special measures, or requires significant improvement (under the old system, serious weaknesses). The school is then monitored closely and inspected again.
Graded inspections from 2019 to 2025
Until November 2025 a graded inspection gave the school an overall grade: Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement, Inadequate. From September 2024 Ofsted stopped giving the overall grade but still graded areas such as quality of education.
A school keeps its old grade on record until it’s next inspected. As schools are usually inspected about every four years, many will show old grades until about 2030.
Ungraded inspections
Schools that were Good or Outstanding often had a shorter, ungraded inspection to check they were still at that level. It doesn’t give a new grade. The outcome says whether the school is still at its previous grade, and sometimes that the next visit should be a full inspection (shown as “S5 Next”).
Schools that became academies
When a school becomes an academy it’s registered as a new school with a new number (URN). Until Ofsted inspects the new academy, its page on the Ofsted website shows no grade. We show the last inspection of the school it replaced and say clearly that the grade belongs to the old school.
When the next inspection is likely
Ofsted doesn’t publish its inspection schedule, and schools usually get about a day’s notice. We estimate the next inspection from the date of the last one:
- most schools are inspected about every four years
- schools graded requires improvement under the old system were normally inspected again within 30 months
- new schools are usually first inspected within about three years of opening
- by law, a school must be inspected within five school years of the end of the school year of its last inspection
Ofsted can inspect sooner if it has concerns, for example after complaints. Treat our dates as a guide, not a timetable.
Where the data comes from
Inspection results come from Ofsted’s monthly management information about state-funded school inspections. School details such as address, age range and trust come from the Department for Education’s Get Information about Schools register. Both are published under the Open Government Licence. We check for new data every Monday.
Ofsted data as at 30 September 2026, school details from Get Information about Schools, 26 October 2026.