School policies: what Ofsted is looking for

Your individual policies won't be graded

Ofsted doesn't:

• Make graded judgements about individual policies
• Issue set criteria on what you should have in a policy or how you should present it

We were told this by Ofsted.

Usually, inspectors will only want to talk to people to assess their understanding of any procedures you've set out in policies, rather than look at the policies directly.

Inspectors can still ask to see policies

They can do this for any policies that are relevant to the focus of your inspection.

As inspectors decide what the focus is, we can't tell you which of your school's policies they'll ask to see.

However, to get yourself prepared, use our Policy Expert to make sure you have all the statutory policies in place.

Ofsted will focus on implementation

Ofsted mentions policy implementation in several places in the inspection handbook, which