Some Ofsted reports will seem more positive without headline grades

Three in five schools rated ‘requires improvement’ last year had two or more ‘good’ or better sub-grades, suggesting some parents will see a more positive overall picture of their child’s school now that headline Ofsted grades have been scrapped.

This week, the government scrapped overall effectiveness grades for state schools with immediate effect, ahead of a move to introduce a new system of report cards next September.

Ofsted will continue to give schools grades for four sub-judgments, including quality of education and leadership and management.

Analysts at FFT Education Datalab looked at the 3,660 inspection reports published in 2023-24 to compare the four sub-judgment grades with the now scrapped grade for overall effectiveness.

Nearly all ‘outstanding’ schools had the same grade in the four judgements. This was 70 per cent for ‘good’ schools – suggesting the remaining 30 per cent had ‘outstanding’ features.

But this was more variable for ‘requires improvement’ (20 per cent) and ‘inadequate’ (25 per cent) schools.

Under the 2019 inspection framework, which remains in force but without headline grades, a school is rated ‘inadequate’ if any of the four judgments are given that lowest grade.

It’s also “likely” that if a school receives a ‘requires improvement’ grade for any of the sub-judgments, then its overall effectiveness would be rated at that level.

RI schools more likely to have ‘good’ features

Of the schools rated RI overall last year, Datalab found 62 per cent were rated ‘good’ or better for at least two of the sub-judgments. This was just 8 per cent for inadequate schools.

Analysts said: “Anyone looking at sub-judgments for a school judged RI overall will be faced with a variable set of sub-judgments. Perhaps that’s better than a single overall headline.”

John Jerrim, UCL Institute of Education professor, said these schools “will indeed look better to most people”. For instance, “lots of parents will assume that three ‘goods’ means it’s ‘good’ overall currently, but that’s not the case”.

It shows the Department for Education “have not really changed anything substantive yet to be honest. It’s really a political change – a tickbox off a manifesto pledge – more than anything else.”

However, he said the number of RI schools is “pretty small” so the absolute number actually impacted by “this nuance is going to be pretty small”.

Will ‘OGGO’ become the new banner headline?

Schools with positive Ofsted grades commonly tout them on banners and websites.

History teacher Tom Rogers said he hoped school “brags don’t go from ‘we are outstanding’ to ‘we are OGGO in sub categories (outstanding, good, good, outstanding) or ‘we are mostly outstanding’”.

“I honestly think all grades need to go. It needs to be commentary in a report and that’s it.”

For instance, an inspection report was published this week for The Pastures Primary School in Leicester.

It was rated ‘good’ overall in June, but broken down it received “good, outstanding, outstanding, good”.

As the school was inspected last academic year, it has still received an overall effectiveness grade. If the school was inspected this year, it would instead just get the four sub-grades.

Tories say change removes ‘vital’ parent info

Damian Hinds, the shadow education secretary, warned the change “removes a vital piece of info for parents but adds none. Ofsted already assesses and grades four key areas and gives narrative. Ofsted reports are typically 1,400 words; they are not one word.”

The government’s move to these sub-judgments has also reignited debates on how reliable Ofsted grades are. UCL research last year cast doubt on the reliability of ‘inadequate’ judgments, depending on who the inspector was.

Stephen Tierney, a former headteacher, said: “We need to be assured that the grades given to a school are essentially independent of the particular inspectors who assessed the school and the timing of the visit.

“Arguably, if we continue using sub grades in reports, then reports should read something like this: ‘The Quality of Education is graded 2, it is a good, and we are confident that it sits somewhere in the range 1-3 (outstanding to requires improvement). The inspectors are reasonably confident it is not inadequate’.

“Alternatively, we could ask Ofsted inspectors to provide a nuanced narrative based report and provide supporting statistical data alongside it.”