Our associate education experts David Driscoll, Gulshan Kayembe and John Dunne helped us write this article.
Be concise and evaluative
Make sure your self-evaluation summary is concise. You could do this by using bullet points, as they're easy to adapt as your school changes.
Make sure that:
- You're completely clear about the differences between attainment, progress and achievement
- All of your sentences are evaluative and none are purely descriptive
When you've finished, go back through the text and remove any unnecessary details. Ask yourself:
- Do the grades for each area of judgement link with each other? For example, do they show that the quality of education is ‘good’ because the effectiveness of leadership and management is ‘good’? If not, have you explained the difference?
- Do the evaluations match the criteria in Ofsted's school inspection handbook?
- Have you been completely honest with yourself?
Describe the impact of actions
Your SEF should identify the impact of the actions you've taken.
- How has your school changed?
- What do pupils and staff do differently now?
- What does success look like?
- Who has benefited from this?
Back up your statements with evidence
If you say that pupils enjoy coming to school, for example, you could support this using attendance data or pupil and parent voice activities.
There's no single set of evidence that you should use, as it will depend on the information you normally use to assess your school. However, you should take the following into account as a minimum:
- Observations of teaching and learning
- Scrutiny of pupils’ books
- Records of special educational needs (SEN)
- Child protection records
You may also wish to refer to:
- Your previous inspection report
- Your most recent Analyse School Performance (ASP) report
- Your school improvement plan
- The Ofsted evaluation criteria, as set out in the school inspection handbook
Ofsted has no preferred SEF format
Remember that inspectors evaluate the extent to which your leaders and governors evaluate the quality of your provision and outcomes through self-assessment.
However, Ofsted does not require you to present your SEF in a specific format (see paragraph 16 of the school inspection handbook).
You can use our template to save you time creating your own.
What inspectors are looking for
Inspectors use your SEF to get a picture of how your senior leadership team and governing board see your school. It's therefore helpful to give them:
- A judgement on your school's performance in each of the main areas of inspection
- An explanation of why you have given these judgements