Ofsted has published updated inspection toolkits and guides that will change how inspectors judge school achievement, disadvantaged pupils and inclusion from September. The new materials come into force at the start of the next academic year, while the current toolkit will continue to apply until the end of this school year.
The timing matters because schools are already preparing for a framework that will ask inspectors to look more closely at what pupil data shows over time, including how schools compare with similar institutions. Lee Owston said the new statistical model is meant to give leaders and inspectors more information about how well pupils in one school are doing against schools with a similar context, which is why the update is now drawing attention from heads, SEND teams and governors.
Under the updated grading toolkits, inspectors will use achievement data as a starting point for discussions with leaders. They will consider how pupils’ attainment and progress in national tests and examinations compare not just with national averages, but with similar schools as well. Ofsted and the Department for Education have created a new statistical model to group comparable schools together, although the inspectorate has not set out every detail of how those groups will be built.
The biggest change for many schools is the wording around disadvantaged pupils. Inspectors will look at whether those pupils attain well, including whether their attainment is in line with disadvantaged pupils nationally, and whether they make appropriate progress from their starting points, including how that progress compares with non-disadvantaged pupils nationally. Ofsted has also introduced the phrase “leaders who have an inclusion role” in its materials, and the toolkit now makes clear that inclusion is the responsibility of all leaders and staff in a setting, not only one named postholder.
That point lands in a live debate inside schools. Headteachers’ leaders have already raised concerns that the stronger inclusion focus in the new inspection framework was creating a large workload for Sendcos, the staff who often carry day-to-day responsibility for special educational needs provision. Owston said inspectors should consider this area for those in the “contextualised” group and look at leaders in other roles beyond the Sendco, a sign that Ofsted wants inclusion to be treated as a whole-school job rather than an administrative side issue.
The new approach also reaches beyond inspection day. When judges look at a school’s inclusion grade, they will consider whether leaders, alongside governors or trustees, have developed and published an inclusion strategy on the school website. That strategy is expected to explain how the school’s overall funding allocation, including the Department for Education’s new inclusive mainstream fund, will be used to meet the needs of the cohort and improve inclusive practice across the school. The department wants schools to publish those strategies by December, turning what was once an internal discussion into a public test of how seriously schools are putting inclusion into practice.
The unresolved question is how quickly schools can adapt to a model that compares them more directly with similar institutions while also widening responsibility for inclusion across the leadership team. Ofsted has set the clock: the new toolkit starts in September, and by December schools are expected to show, in public, how they plan to use their funding to back that promise.
