Today we’ve published our annual updates to the education inspection materials under the renewed education inspection framework (EIF). They cover early years settings, state-funded schools, non-association independent schools, further education (FE) and skills providers and initial teacher education (ITE) providers.
These updates apply to inspections from September 2026. Until then, our inspectors will continue to use the existing materials.
In future, we aim to update the education inspection materials (the toolkits, operating guides and inspection information documents) on an annual basis. We’ll publish the changes in advance, ready for them to come into effect in September each year.
Over the last few years, Ofsted has embarked on a journey of significant change, leading to the launch of the renewed EIF in November 2025. We remain committed to strengthening relationships and building trust with the professionals we inspect and regulate, as well as with children and learners, and their parents and carers. Listening to feedback is central to this commitment.
In this post, we explain some important themes you will see in the changes. Please read the summary of changes on GOV.UK for the full list of updates.
How we are reflecting updated government guidance
Our toolkits are grounded in the statutory and non-statutory guidance from the Department for Education. This means that each year, as part of our updates, we will reflect how the relevant guidance has changed or will change in the next academic year. This will allow us to reflect it in our inspection practice at the appropriate time.
We always recognise where guidance is new. We won’t expect you to have a perfect policy, perfectly enforced, as soon as the guidance changes – and we won’t hold you to account for reforms that haven’t happened yet. You can read more about these updates in our change notes.
Achievement and context in school inspections
We often hear about context in relation to the ‘achievement’ evaluation area. I spoke about this extensively in my recent speech at the Schools and Academies Show.
Context is any information that helps us interpret our evidence fairly. It is part of inspection, but never pre‑determines the grades we give. Our understanding of context develops through conversations with leaders, what we see on inspection and the broad range of evidence we gather.
Often, this is straightforward and informs ‘what’ we do – for example, adapting our activity to the size or type of the setting we are inspecting. But, when context becomes more complex, it shapes how we evaluate what we see.
Together with the Department for Education, we have created a new statistical model to group similar schools together. This provides additional information to help leaders and inspectors understand how well pupils in one school are achieving compared to schools with a similar context.
This has also been reflected in the updated state‑funded schools toolkit, particularly around what published and official data indicates about achievement over time, including when compared to similar schools, and how inspectors gather evidence about disadvantaged pupils’ attainment and progress.
We’ve updated the early years part of the toolkit with regard to Early Years Foundation Stage Profile data and the proportion of children reaching a good level of development compared to the national average.
A focus on inclusion across all inspections
When we refer to inclusion, we mean it in its widest possible sense. So, when we talk about knowing your children and learners, we mean those who are disadvantaged, who have SEND or who are known to children’s social care – but it does also go beyond the statutory groups. There are different reasons that children and learners may need support and could benefit from inclusive practice. That’s why we have a fourth ‘contextualised’ group – those facing other barriers to their learning and/or wellbeing.
We have listened to and reflected on what we have learned in the first seven months of the framework. We have introduced the term ‘leaders who have an inclusion role’ within our inspection materials. This is because inclusion is the responsibility of all leaders and staff within a setting, and we want to encourage inspectors and leaders to consider this evaluation area for those within the ‘contextualised’ group and look at those with other leadership roles, beyond that of the SENCo. For example, this may be the designated teacher or the inclusion lead.
Learning walks in inspection of schools and further education and skills providers
Our renewed methodology places collaboration and professional dialogue at the heart of our inspection practice. This has meant more opportunities for joint activities between leaders and inspectors, such as learning walks.
Within the smallest schools, we recognise that leaders have also felt the need to undertake these learning walks. We’ve heard that this has added pressure and workload to the day-to-day running of schools, as has trying to match the number of available leaders to the number of inspectors.
We’ve updated our operating guides for state-funded schools, further education and skills providers, and non-association independent schools to guide inspectors on the range of leaders who can accompany them on learning walks. We also guide inspectors to use regular reflection meetings to ensure leaders remain aware of what inspectors have seen and heard during these activities.
Our updates have also clarified the particular focus of learning walks on ‘curriculum and teaching’ and ‘achievement’ evaluation areas, tailored by discussions with leaders in the planning call. There will continue to be opportunities to gather evidence against the other evaluation areas.
Data alongside report cards
We are proud of the new report cards which provide an overview of the grade profile as well as the narrative detail to explain the grade given in every evaluation area.
This is also the first time we have published data alongside our inspection outcomes, to continue providing comparative contextual detail to support parents and carers in understanding a school or setting’s performance.
However, we’ve heard that it would be helpful to provide more guidance to make it clearer where the data that sits alongside the report card comes from. We will be publishing guidance to support those who use and read our report cards to understand this feature better.
We also heard that it was not as helpful to have national data comparisons for special schools, so we have already started to remove these from report cards.
Find out more
You can familiarise yourself with the updates for early years settings, state-funded schools, non-association independent schools, further education (FE) and skills providers and initial teacher education (ITE) providers.
We also have a separate blog post about how safeguarding underpins the early years changes. These changes include reflecting updates to the Early Years Foundation Stage around safer sleeping and eating in registered early years settings. The safer sleeping and eating changes are also included in our updated state‑funded schools toolkit, to inform how we inspect school-based nurseries and maintained nursery schools.
Remember, all changes to the toolkits only apply from September 2026.