The updates to Ofsted's guidance on school inspection don’t require significant changes to what your school is currently doing.
We’re updating our articles on school inspection across our site and plan to have these ready before the start of the 2026/27 academic year. Select ‘save for later’ at the top of any Ofsted-related article and we’ll notify you when it’s ready.
Key changes include:
Attainment and progress will now be compared with similar schools
As part of this, Ofsted is introducing a similar schools data model for attainment. Similar schools information will be included in inspection data summary reports (IDSR) from September. The data won’t be used to make grading decisions, but will provide further information to support inspectors’ understanding of a school’s context ,and help discussions around achievement and pupil