After seven years of waiting, OFSTED finally inspected Blackhorse Primary on 25th November – the final week of the ‘early volunteer’ group of schools who had put themselves forward to be first under this new toolkit. My other school, Emersons Green Primary, which has also been waiting seven years and also put itself up to be inspected in November, was not selected and so we await a second inspection in 2026 (Happy New Year)!
As I pointed out in my first blog about the inspection, which outlined how the process operated and felt, I am basing this advice on a sample size of one (well… one and a bit, as another school in the Trust were inspected a week before us and gave us a good insight as to what was coming our way). This blog may be useful in giving some pointers, but what it is not is a definitive guide to things that will DEFINATELY help. These things helped our inspection run well, but this new inspection toolkit means different inspections will look different between schools, so please don’t take everything written here as gospel!
Likewise, morally, I’m asking myself whether I should be encouraging leaders to prepare at all. OFSTED’s line is that inspections should drive no extra work… I have considered whether this blog adds to this problem, but have concluded that it would be less principled to know a few things which made the inspection run more smoothly (and with less stress) and, as very experienced leaders, keep them to ourselves.
In fact, so paranoid am I that my musings will drive more work for school leaders forever chasing the OFSTED dragon, I’ve put a (very VERY crude) ‘how likely out of five this is to be useful beyond my own school’s gates’ rating against each bit of advice.
So, remember – these are just some things which seemed to make a difference in ONE school…
Knowing your school is more important than files of evidence:
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We spent months on our SEF (which, like all the things mentioned below can be found here). And whilst we sent it with the documents after the initial phone call, it was literally never mentioned again. Likewise, the beautiful evidence file which we’d lovingly curated and left in the inspectors’ room… never discussed.
We can comfort ourselves with ‘stuff’ when it comes to inspection prep.
We like to think that a thick ring-bound folder will be both our shield and our armour when the inspector finally calls.
But in reality, the thing that made the most difference was not written on paper or filed in any folder (even one with multi-coloured tabs).
What made the difference was knowing the quality of teaching in every class. Knowing the individual provision for every child. In every class. Knowing what impact our decisions had made. In every class.
Now, I’m not saying don’t bother with any written evidence or a SEF etc. These things help us organise and summarise our thoughts. But please don’t make this work overtake the work of being a leader who spends time in classrooms monitoring and improving teaching and learning.
That, above all else, is what matters/ed most.
Read the School Inspection Operating Guide carefully
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Whilst most Heads (who are due inspection) will no doubt have started reading the OFSTED Toolkit itself, to really understand what your inspection will look like, you need to read and understand the School Inspection Operating Guide. One hallmark of this new inspection approach is that it aims to be transparent by publishing exactly what will happen before, during and after an inspection – all of which is explained in this document. And our experience was that this made the way the inspection ran something we could predict and plan for.
Make sure your website tells your story
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Whilst we know that OFSTED have a list of statutory things to look for on a school’s website, we knew that this was also the shop window for what our school was about; primarily for parents – but also for inspectors.
For a whole host of reasons, we thought carefully about the key messages (and key strengths) which we wanted our website to convey and then made sure they were front and centre. Likewise, we didn’t want to waste time having to explain our teaching approaches to inspectors so put all of these on the website too.
And it worked. The inspectors had spent a LOT of time trawling through the school’s site, mining it for information (which far exceeded the statutory list) before they arrived. We lost count of the times an inspector would reply “yes, I saw that on your website” whenever we showed them one of our codified teaching approaches. And whilst you certainly could just show all this information to a team once they arrive, it saved a heap of time and gave us longer to argue the points we were most interested in.
So, it’s a ‘good to have’ – not a ‘must have’ (in terms of explaining teaching and learning).
However, a word of caution (which we drummed into the staff before hand): if you put something on the website saying X of Y is taught in a particular way, then make sure that it actually is taught that way – in EVERY SINGLE CLASS (more on this later)…
Create a Battle Plan
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I have been headteachering for nearly twenty years, experiencing OFSTED inspections as the head in 2009, 2011, 2015, 2018 and (finally) 2025.
It is safe to say that 2025’s inspection ‘wasn’t my first rodeo’.
And yet, no matter how grizzled and battle-hardened you are; no matter how confident you feel about the impending inspection’s outcome, the same Amygdalan Hijack will happen every time that call comes in. Put simply, when the school administrator pops their head around your office door and says OFSTED are on the phone, your brain will react in exactly the same way as if they’d told you there was a lion in the foyer.
So, knowing that our frontal lobes would all immediately switch off, that our bloodstream would be immediately flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, we created a detailed ‘battle plan‘ outlining what everyone’s roles were from the moment the inspector first called at 9:30am on a Monday, until the inspection began. This may seem OTT, but it meant we weren’t dashing around trying to figure out who would buy the biscuits and when to tell the staff. All leaders (and office staff) simply followed their individual tick-list.
Again, this isn’t a ‘must have’, but – having done this for the last two inspection cycles – it makes life a lot less stressful.
Script the phone call
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The operating guide sets out exactly what will be asked in the 90 minute phone call the day before the inspection. We therefore created a script (in the form of bullets and notes) which contained all the information which the inspector would ask for, in the order it would be requested, along with key figures, strengths and points we wanted to land. It also included who would be in the room and who would lead on each section. For example, much of the new toolkit focuses on inclusion, so our Inclusion Leader (and Deputy Headteacher) led on this section, whilst myself and the Head of School led on other parts.
Again, this lifted the cognative load during this call and allowed us to get our points across clearly.
Know where the evidence is for every line of every judgement statement
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Like everyone, we looked to map our evidence against the statements in the toolkit. This helped us to drill down into what each statement required.
However, as we quickly discovered with this ‘secure-fit’ toolkit, being amazing at most of the statements in, say, Teaching & Curriculum, means nothing if you’re missing evidence for a phrase from one of the other statements. This isn’t too hard for ‘Expected’ – as statements like ‘mostly’, ‘broadly’ and ‘generally’ leave some wiggle room. However, when you move into the Strong standard you come across ‘all pupils’, ‘all subjects’ and ‘consistently’ as wording. Having spent years agonising about the progress of every child in Reading, Writing and Maths, it was how well disadvantaged children (in our case mainly SENDK) could discuss core knowledge in foundation subjects which made the difference between one judgement and another. And, with the three judgements: Teaching & Curriculum, Achievement and Leadership all connected, once one goes, they all go. And it appears you can’t have any ‘Exceptional’ judgements unless all three of those are ‘Strong’.
And this is where we learned a hard lesson. With the strict secure fit, you are only as strong as the weakest evidence you have for a single statement/ phrase/ word within a judgement (for strong at least). It doesn’t matter if other things you are doing in this area are excellent (something the inspectors acknowledged), if a single word or phrase can’t be securely evidenced then that judgement is bumped down to the one below.
Likewise, we’d learned the week before, from the other Trust school’s inspection, that quizzing children on British Values is still a thing, so don’t get caught out on this (faintly ridiculous) detail. Likewise, details of the RE curriculum, largely ignored in the ‘deep dive’ methodology of the past, were once again checked in terms of pupil knowledge (which was the case in both our school and our Trust partner school the week before). This might have been because we were aiming for something beyond ‘Expected’ for Personal Development, so may not be the case in other contexts.
So, whilst its tempting to brush over the bits of statements which might feel a bit more precarious (or trivial), it is exactly these areas which you need to sure up if you are to avoid a judgement sliding back to the one below.
Know your data
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So this is pretty obvious, and something which all school leaders spend time on as they prep for an inspection. However, in this framework leaders are expected to move from the data headlines, to the granular detail of pupils’ attainment pretty quickly. Our IDSR had good data and a good three-year trend with no real negative flags other than last year’s FSM attendance, which was pounced on and needed some forensic explanation (more on this later). So it is really important that you look for any niggling little weaknesses in your data, as this is what the inspectors will disproportionately focus on.
On top of statutory historic data, inspectors will also expect leaders to have a good understanding of how statutory data is used to shape provision for children still at the school. For example:
- EYFS Baseline – what does this tell you about the children’s current needs and how has EY provision been adapted to address any cohort or group specific weaknesses.
- EYFS GLD – who were the children leaving EYFS without achieving a Good Level of Development and what are leaders doing to close any gaps?
- Phonics – which children leaving EYFS look at risk of not passing the screener – how are these children being prioritised in Y1? Which children didn’t pass the screener in Y1 – how are these children prioritised in Y2 to catch up? Ditto children in KS2!
- Multiplication check – the inspectors left this alone as our outcomes were really strong for disadvantaged pupils, but I can see this being another area of enquiry if maths results are mixed.
Here, again, we made the mistake of over-preparing the areas where we had solid evidence. We created impact studies for Reading, Writing and Maths only to find inspectors move past these areas in a matter of minutes once they had enough evidence. You don’t get extra marks for over-preparing in some areas, but you will lose marks for under-preparing in others!
Know your approach to foundational knowledge
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One of Blackhorse’s four pillars of our mission statement is ‘purposeful practice’ so this is an area we’d spent a lot of time on. Even so, this was a huge area of focus for inspectors. Handwriting (something we monitor weekly as we’d identified it as a barrier to our most vulnerable writers) was as important (in our inspection) as things like early reading under the previous framework. Likewise, we had detailed monitoring of individual children’s number knowledge within our maths strategy.
Knowing exactly what foundational knowledge whole school strategies for all pupils; then interventions for groups; then progress of individuals, made this aspect go a lot more smoothly – especially as we had ambitions beyond ‘Expected’.
I’d love to say that we then retired to the inspectors’ team room for tea and medals, but this toolkit is VERY exacting beyond the ‘Expected’ judgement, so even being really clear on your strategy matters little if any inconsistencies are spotted during the learning walks.
Know the day-to-day experience of disadvantaged pupils
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This framework (quite rightly) puts the progress of disadvantaged children above all else. This is the foundation of social justice and I completely agree with this methodology. In a school like Blackhorse (which has low deprivation and high SEND) if you do a book scrutiny of a whole class then you’ll be blinded by the majority doing well.
So, last year, having repeatedly seen solid outcomes for ‘most’, we took the decision to only look at the books of the SEND/ PP/ LAC children. Likewise, during the (fortnightly) lesson drop-ins, we spent much of our time looking at this group.
We also have termly ‘shifting the dial’ pupils – who are at the front of the teachers’ minds and have granular individual targets for foundational knowledge gaps. Being able to say to an inspector ‘the teacher is about to check child X knows Y as that’s their individual target, during a learning walk, helped build confidence that the school knew this level of detail.
And this turned out to be the methodology of inspectors. Almost all the pupil conferences were drawn from this group of pupils (only the single-sex protected characteristics/ consent group and pupils’ council wasn’t). Likewise, inspectors spent almost all their time with these pupils during lesson observations.
By spending time scrutinising these pupils’ experience in the year running up to inspection, we knew exactly what this looked like – which made narrating this all the easier.
Likewise, we knew which clubs every disadvantaged pupil attended, and which pastoral programmes they accessed. This again really helped (more on this later).
Create ‘crib sheets’ of your disadvantaged pupils
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As mentioned earlier, the inspection looks at your school through the lens of the experience of disadvantaged pupils, so we felt it important to be able to narrate this with clarity.
With 130 children on our SEND register and 40 children in receipt of Pupil Premium, we took the decision (on the Saturday before our inspection as we had a sixth sense we were next!) to create crib sheets for each class. These contained a photo of the child and their name, any academic/ pastoral barriers (especially in terms of foundational skills), what support they received (including which staff were their champion and extra-curricular activities etc) and what the impact of that support had been. We carried these around with us on every learning walk which allowed us to explain what adaptions/ support were being provided in the moment to individual children as well as articulating the needs, support and (most importantly) impact within any classroom. We didn’t hide these from the inspectors. Indeed one asked if we’d made these just for their visit. I answered honestly that we did – and explained that with limited time we wanted to be clear about the support we offer to disadvantaged children.
We also practiced as an SLT walking the school and narrating the experience of disadvantaged children in each class with all the leaders who would need to lead a learning walk, ensuring we were all landing the same level of detail and key messages.
Indeed, in our Trust we’ve discussed what one thing we should ask our leaders to do in preparation for inspection and walking the school and narrating the impact of teaching on disadvantaged children is what we settled on as being the thing which seemed to have the most impact on our management of the inspection.
Know which leaders will lead the learning walks
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In a two form entry primary, there are four inspectors on day 1 and three on day 2. In a one form primary there will be three on day 1 and two on day 2. Most of the first day is spent on learning walks with leaders. For us, there was one walk with the Lead Inspector of the whole school, an EYFS walk, a KS2 walk, a Y1-3 walk and an inclusion walk.
This occupies a lot of leaders’ time for most of the two days. It is therefore worth thinking who is best placed to lead learning walks. We are a ‘big-ish’ school with lots of experienced and confident leaders, and it still felt like a lot. In a smaller school where many leaders have a teaching responsibility this will need careful planning. The team are happy to let schools decide who will lead each walk, and we decided to have both the SENDCO and Inclusion Leader do the Inclusion walk together as they could narrate both the detail and strategy better as a pair.
Deciding this well in advance also allows leaders to ‘learn their brief’ and practice what key messages they want to communicate. This, again, made the inspection run much more smoothly.
Know who your nominee will be
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I was quite sceptical about the whole ‘nominee’ role prior to the inspection. As I said earlier – not my first rodeo. I was the Executive Headteacher and had led the school for 15 years. I had a Head of School who had been alongside me for the whole time, first as DHT and then HoS for the last three years. I had a DHT who had been a serious heavyweight leader at the school for 12 years. Add to this four hardened phase leaders and you’ve got to ask, did we need a ‘nominee’?
Yes… Yes we did!
The nominee role allows an extra (more objective/ less emotionally involved) leader to join the inspection. In our case it was our Leaf Trust’s Director of Education. She knew the school inside out and could help manage the inspection along side the rest of us. She also coached the staff between learning walks and helped to ensure the inspectors saw practice which they have missed on their first pass.
So, decide well in advance who this person will be – and make sure they know your school as well as you do.
Make good use of case studies
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For areas which lacked hard data, case studies – particularly those that looked as a pupil’s outcomes over a number of years – made a big difference. Ours were quite simple – a pen portrait of needs/ barriers, an explanation of both the academic and pastoral support which had been offered and then the impact over time. We had high ambitions for areas such as inclusion and personal development so created a dozen or so case studies, mainly focusing on successes, but with a few providing context for children who had less favourable outcomes.
Indeed, at the end of day 1 our CEO and the Head of School toiled long into the evening to create case studies for every FSM child who had weaker attendance, as this was looking like a barrier to a particular judgement and was flagged on the IDSR. However, this was time well spent as it provided the evidence needed to get over a particular hurdle – so don’t be afraid to create these to counter crude data.
Use ‘typicality’ to smooth over unexpected hiccups
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Sometimes staff get really nervous when an inspector calls. Sometimes practice in classes is different when an inspector is in the room to when you’ve seen it every week for the past three years.
If you know your school and regularly visit classes then when (and it usually ‘when’ not ‘if’) someone gets nervous and does something unusual, you can straight away point out that ‘this practice is not what I typically see’. You don’t need to provide huge monitoring logs, but if you can talk with confidence about what practice in a classroom typically looks like (and invite the inspector to return the next day) little blips don’t need to become trails.
Ask ‘what do you need to see for this to be ‘expected/ strong/ exceptional’ (etc)?’
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In the team meetings, unlike in previous inspection frameworks, school leaders are allowed to fully participate in the discussions around evidence and judgements. It is important that leaders are confident enough to (respectfully and politely) challenge when assumptions start being made. Asking what more evidence was needed (especially at the end of day 1) allowed us to secure a number of judgements which we may not have got if we’d sat passively by. We also asked whether inspectors had secure evidence when they started to arrive at conclusions which were different to our own, and, again, they were open to discussions about whether their conclusions were secure – allowing us to provide evidence which successfully shifted a few judgements in our favour when we had the opportunity to show the team more evidence.
Roll with the punches
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Whilst the warmth and care shown by inspectors is undoubtedly much improved in this framework, the toolkit is entirely inflexible. It is administered exactly as proscribed and the judgements are harder to achieve than the previous ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ – which was ‘best fit’. And whilst this should result in less variation in outcomes (something which schools have long complained about) it means some fights you simply can’t win.
We’d naïvely judged ourselves as ‘Strong+’ across the board having been knocking on the door of ‘Outstanding’ in the previous framework.
As our inspection report hasn’t yet been published (and we have yet to see a draft report) I can’t go into details, but suffice to say, we didn’t get seven ‘Strong+’ judgements.
If you’re used to the ‘best fit’ model of old, some of these new judgements can feel a bit like hitting a brick wall. We had an idea of what was coming following a fellow (very good) Trust school being inspected the week before. Had I not known this, I think I’d have found the process more difficult.
As it was, we were expecting the bucket of toolkit cold water to come our way so it felt less of a surprise when it arrived.
When a judgement didn’t go our way, we took the hit and moved on, allowing us to win fights in other places.
Simon hasn’t told you to do anything
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I’m very aware that some people will read this and think that I have a greater level of insight than is the case.
Fact is, this was one inspection at the start of a new toolkit. Please, please, please… don’t run off and do something because you’ve heard (from me) that OFSTED definitely want something.
Know the quality of teaching and learning.
Be able to narrate your school (especially the experience of disadvantaged children).
Everything else is just my ramblings.
Don’t panic.
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I have another inspection at Emersons Green, most likely in the next couple of months (possibly in the next fortnight). I feel a lot less spooked by this second inspection having experienced the one recounted above. I believe that this framework is (on the whole) an improvement. I really like the change in the way inspectors interact with staff and leaders.
So please don’t drive yourself mad trying to become some kind of ‘OFSTED soothsayer’. At the end of the day, your school’s strengths will be visible no matter what level of preparation you do, so you are best just doing some prior planning, and then getting on with transforming children’s lives.
Because that’s what we are actually paid to do.