Our game of guess the Ofsted grade was more baffling than we’d hoped

How do pupils “thrive” in a school where curriculum and teaching aren’t rated as ‘strong’? This and other questions were raised by the first Ofsted reports, says Adrian Lyons

Guess the grade became a new parlour game among some of my former HMI colleagues when the first Ofsted inspection reports under the new framework were published on Monday. Readers may wish to play along.

Take, for example, a secondary school in the east of England. Here is an extract from the report’s evaluation of leadership and governance:

“The interests of pupils and their families are at the forefront of every action taken in this school… Leaders and governors have addressed the weaknesses highlighted in the last inspection… The culture of the school has improved…

“Governors have an accurate oversight of the school and ensure leaders are held to account… Staff are proud to work in the school and value the care and attention leaders and governors give to workload and work-life balance.”

This reads as a highly positive account of leadership: purposeful, reflective, inclusive and humane. It describes improvement since the previous inspection, effective quality assurance, strong governance oversight and a workforce that feels valued and supported.

Yet the grade awarded was merely ‘expected standard’.

There is nothing in the narrative to suggest what leadership is not doing, or why it falls short of something stronger.

Indeed, while the heading refers to “leadership and governance”, governance itself receives just two sentences in a lengthy section that would once have been challenged by inspectors as overly descriptive rather than evaluative.

Further questions

A second report, this time from a secondary school in the north east of England, raised further questions. Here, achievement is judged to be “strong”, with inspectors explaining why:

“Vulnerable pupils make significant progress… By summer 2025, the proportion of disadvantaged pupils achieving standard and strong passes in GCSE English and mathematics was well above the national average… Pupils are well prepared for their next steps and expertly supported to secure ambitious destinations.”

Few readers would dispute this judgment. Strong outcomes, strong progress, strong preparation for life beyond school.

Naturally, this prompted me to turn to the curriculum and teaching section, expecting to read about the strong practice underpinning these outcomes. Instead, this area is judged only to be at the ‘expected standard’.

Again, the narrative is broadly positive: a strong focus on literacy and numeracy, effective support for weaker readers, purposeful teaching, careful assessment, improving curriculum quality across subjects, leaders who know where improvement is still needed and are acting on it.

Of course, it is entirely reasonable for inspection judgments to differ across areas. I frequently made such distinctions when leading inspections myself. But the onus was always on inspectors to explain why this was so, to help readers understand how the pieces fitted together.

Puzzling

Under the new framework, there is no overall effectiveness judgment to act as a synthesising lens. I therefore looked to the section “What is it like to be a pupil at this school?” for clarity. It begins, unequivocally: “Pupils thrive at…”

This leaves me genuinely puzzled. How do pupils “thrive” in a school where curriculum and teaching are not considered strong?

How do disadvantaged pupils achieve well above national averages if the curriculum that enables this is only meeting expectations? What, precisely, distinguishes “strong” from “expected” in practice – and where is that distinction made explicit?

If experienced inspectors, school leaders and policy watchers are left playing “guess the grade”, we have a problem. Inspection reports are not merely accountability tools. They are public documents intended to inform parents, guide improvement and build confidence in the system. Ambiguity, however well-intentioned, risks doing the opposite.

The danger is not that schools are being judged harshly, but that judgments are becoming harder to interpret, harder to trust and harder to learn from.

Clarity matters. Without it, even positive reports leave more questions than answers.