Analysis of more than 30,000 Ofsted reports suggests “uneven provision” of science education across England. SchoolDash used large language models (LLMs) to analyse more than 40,000 Ofsted reports for secondary schools published between September 1999 and 27 June this year. These were converted to plain text, searching for sentences that mentioned “science”, “biology”, “chemistry” or “physics”. An LLM then filtered them down to 31,748 reports with the most matches. It established 10 themes most frequently mentioned by inspectors relating to science, including ‘attainment’, ‘teaching’, ‘staffing, ‘enrichment’ and ‘curriculum’. It also looked at the sentiment of what inspectors said – breaking comments down into ‘positive’, ‘neutral’, or ‘negative’. When broken down by overall Ofsted rating – for schools inspected before headline grades were abolished in September 2024 – SchoolDash found that “unsurprisingly, there are big differences” in sentiments expressed by inspectors. “These are particularly large for attainment, teaching, staffing, curriculum, assessment and enrichment, suggesting that these may have been among the bigger drivers of the ratings ultimately awarded,” it said. Negative comments But the study found “considerable disparities” in the sentiments inspectors expressed about attainment, as well as teaching, staff and enrichment. The study said more negative attainment comments were “to be expected if exam results are genuinely worse”. But more negative comments about the other areas implied “Ofsted judged those aspects of science education to be of lower quality in schools serving poorer, lower-attaining pupils than across the secondary school system as a whole”. When broken down by schools’ deprivation level, as well as prior and key stage 4 attainment, it found “considerable disparities” in sentiments expressed about attainment. SchoolDash said while this was “to be expected if exam results were genuinely worse”, similar disparities were found in what was said about teaching, staffing and enrichment. “The implication is that Ofsted judged those aspects of science education to be of lower quality in schools serving poorer, lower-attaining pupils,” it concluded. ‘A glimpse upstream’ SchoolDash described the overall picture as “one of uneven provision of science education, at least as seen through the eyes of Ofsted inspectors, with particularly notable differences in teaching quality and curriculum flexibility”. “We have long been able to see the consequences in GCSE and A-level results, but by analysing Ofsted reports we can get a glimpse upstream at factors that may be contributing to those outcomes.” It added that it was also possible schools serving poorer communities “are not performing any worse, but rather being judged more harshly”. “The available data cannot distinguish between those two possibilities, so we leave it to you, our readers, to decide – noting only that either would be a serious cause for concern.” The work was commissioned by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Jenni French, head of STEM in schools at Gatsby, said: “National teacher numbers only tell part of the story. “Schools serving disadvantaged communities are more likely to struggle to recruit specialist science teachers, and this analysis of Ofsted reports shows that differences in staffing and the quality of science teaching are evident in what’s happening in classrooms. “We need to focus not only on recruiting more teachers, but also on making sure specialist expertise reaches the schools and pupils who need it most.”