This article is based on Ofsted’s 2026 guidance on school inspection.
Curriculum and teaching is graded on a 5-point scale
Curriculum and teaching is one of the evaluation areas that will appear on your school’s inspection report card.
Each evaluation area will be graded using Ofsted’s 5-point grading system, with Ofsted expecting most schools to attain at least an 'expected standard' in each area. The exception is safeguarding, which is either 'met' or 'not met'.
During the planning call, the lead inspector will ask you to evaluate your school's strengths and successes and priorities for improvement, including where you believe you currently sit on the 5-point grading scale for each evaluation area.
The grades are:
- Exceptional
- Strong standard
- Expected standard
- Needs attention
- Urgent improvement
Under the previous framework, Ofsted considered your curriculum as part of your ‘quality of education’ judgement, but it has now been pulled out into its own evaluation area.
Your requirements won’t have significantly changed from previous inspections. In practice, Ofsted will look at similar aspects across this evaluation area to previous inspections. You don’t need to create new or specific types of evidence to meet Ofsted’s new standards.
‘Intent, implementation and impact’ is now inspected across 2 evaluation areas
Under the previous framework, Ofsted focused on these 3 areas together when inspecting your curriculum as part of the ‘quality of education’ judgement.
Now, these fall into the following areas:
| Focus | Definition | Evaluation area |
| Intent | Leaders design a high-quality, ambitious curriculum for all pupils | Curriculum and teaching |
| Implementation | Leaders and staff deliver the curriculum effectively | Curriculum and teaching |
| Impact | The school provides a high-quality education for all pupils | Achievement |
Inspectors won’t conduct deep dives
Ofsted will stop using deep dives to look at the curriculum and teaching of individual subjects in detail.
Instead, inspectors will look at your school’s specific context and improvement priorities.
How you'll be graded
This evaluation area considers whether:
- Leaders design a high-quality, ambitious curriculum for all pupils (the intent), paying particular regard to disadvantaged pupils, those with special educational needs (SEN) and/or a disability, those who are known (or previously known) to children’s social care, and those who may face other barriers to their learning and/or wellbeing
- Leaders and staff deliver the curriculum effectively (the implementation) across all subjects, year groups and Key Stages
- Leaders make sure that pupils build strong foundations for accessing the curriculum and for later success, including academic achievement, good health and wellbeing. This includes evaluating how effectively you support:
- Pupils who are at the early stages of communication and language, reading, writing and maths
- Older pupils whose development is not at their age-appropriate level
Your provision will be graded using the 5-point grading system. We've set out below what 'expected standard', 'strong standard' and 'exceptional' look like in the framework.
See pages 18 to 27 of the State-funded Schools Inspection Toolkit for all the grades and descriptions.
Evidence Ofsted will want to see
Inspectors will gather evidence about curriculum and teaching through conversations with leaders and staff.
They will also carry out learning walks to observe lessons in progress. Where possible, inspectors will review pupils’ work as part of the learning walks and use this to support discussions with pupils about their learning
For primary schools, learning walks will focus on how well you support pupils to secure strong foundations for learning. Inspectors will evaluate how well pupils are taught to read. They will pay particular attention to pupils who need to improve their reading, by:
- Listening to some lower-attaining pupils reading an unfamiliar book, appropriate to their level of phonic knowledge, to a familiar adult
- Discussing the school’s phonics and reading curriculum with the relevant leader
- Visiting phonics lessons, story time sessions and other reading lessons
- Understanding how assessment accurately identifies gaps in pupils’ knowledge and targeted teaching and practice is prioritised to address these
- Exploring the quality and appropriateness of reading materials for pupils who are learning phonics, and texts read aloud to or by pupils, across subjects, to develop fluency and language comprehension
For secondary schools and special schools, learning walks will focus on an agreed group of subjects - you can discuss these with the inspector during the planning call. Inspectors will also use learning walks to gather evidence leaders and staff secure strong foundations for all pupils, including with reading, so that pupils can access the whole curriculum successfully.
This is set out in the 'learning walks' section of the 2026 operating guide for school inspectors.
Inspectors will want to see the work of disadvantaged pupils, those with SEND, those known (or previously known) to children’s social care, and those who face other barriers to their learning and/or wellbeing.
This is set out in the ‘What to do on site during the inspection’ sections of the operating guide.
If your school uses remote education, inspectors will consider whether it's well integrated into your course of study, and well designed as a part of implementing your school's curriculum. They will check that:
- Remote education is recorded correctly in the attendance register
- You're not using it as a justification to send pupils home due to misbehaviour
What inspectors will look for
Using the evidence set out above, Ofsted will assess curriculum and teaching across 5 areas:
Inspectors will take account of your context
When looking at the above factors, inspectors understand that this will not always look the same for different ages, phases and types of provision.
If your school is small, inspectors will recognise that you may:
- Share curriculum expertise and/or resources across schools
- Adopt, adapt or construct your curriculum
- Organise your curriculum differently to meet the needs of pupils who are in a class with a mix of different ages
When evaluating early years provision, inspectors will also look at the early years evaluation area.
When evaluating 16 to 19 study programmes, inspectors will also consider the post-16 provision evaluation area.
When evaluating curriculum and teaching for pupils with SEND, they:
- Seek to understand the starting points of pupils with SEND
- Consider whether pupils have access to a suitable curriculum that builds on their knowledge and is adapted to their needs
- Recognise that pupils’ work can take many forms, and discuss this with leaders
- Consider whether pupils’ needs are properly considered and are met through the design and delivery of the curriculum, including taking into account any reasonable adjustments that need to be made
- Work closely with leaders and staff to understand their strategies to help pupils communicate and, where appropriate, use these strategies (with support from staff) to gather first-hand evidence
This is explained on pages 20 to 21 of the inspection toolkit.
Use our self-evaluation tool to review your provision against the framework
Download and adapt our tool to evaluate how your curriculum and teaching compares to Ofsted’s 'expected' and 'strong' standards.
The tool includes suggestions of the evidence you can use to support each statement, and space to RAG-rate your provision, so you can start to think about what you might want to prioritise.
Depending on your school’s staff structure, you might want to give responsibility for completing this to other members of the senior leadership team (SLT).
We suggest you approach this evaluation 1 section at a time to help make the job more manageable, or tackle it alongside related reviews.
Next steps
- Use our resources on teaching and learning to plan your monitoring activities based on your school's improvement priorities:
- Reviewing the quality of your teaching and learning
- Running interventions: guidance and templates
- Subject monitoring
- Visit our Ofsted resource hub to see all our support to help you navigate inspection