You may have seen that the Department for Education (DfE) is tightening its guidance on mobile phones in schools. Our Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, has said many times that you already have his and Ofsted's full backing to ban mobile phones …
Building a better understanding of the characteristics of those most likely to become and stay teachers. The aim is to inform recruitment and retention strategies and the development of a diverse workforce that mirrors the population it serves.
In this blog, we’ll talk you through the changes we will be making to ungraded inspections in the autumn term. You may already be aware of these changes from the announcements that Sir Martyn Oliver made in his speech to …
A year has passed since the Department for Education (DfE) launched the Online Education Accreditation Scheme (OEAS). The scheme provides a route for providers of full-time online education to apply to the DfE for accreditation. In this blog, we’ll provide …
Small schools are a valuable part of our education system. Pupils who attend them have unique experiences. Leaders who lead them have lots of opportunities, but also face many challenges. In this blog, we set out how we take these …
Persistent school absence is one of the most significant ongoing impacts of the pandemic. The latest data shows that nearly 1 in 4 pupils were absent for 10% of school sessions in autumn 2022, nearly double the position in 2019. …
In this blog, we’ll consider safeguarding through the course of an inspection. We’ll explain some of the main activities we undertake and why. You’ll find lots of references to keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) too. That’s because it sets …
With pupils and teachers now returning to school for a new academic year, this blog gives an overview of some of the recent changes to the school inspection handbook and the way we inspect schools. In June 2023, we committed …
Alternative provider (AP) settings provide education for pupils with complex needs that can’t typically be met in mainstream schools. APs rightly differ from mainstream schools – they serve different purposes and have different objectives. When we inspect an AP, we …
In this blog, we explore the challenges of getting primary pupils back on track with reading. We look at: some useful principles for making sure that all pupils catch up quickly the term fidelity and how it can be most …
This article was originally published by Schools Week. Recently we’ve noticed a rise in the number of complaints we receive from parents. While parents should be able to complain to Ofsted if they’ve gone through their school’s internal process …