Ofsted report cards, explained
England is part-way through the biggest change to school inspection in a generation. Two systems currently coexist; here is how to read both, and how SchoolFacts shows them.
The state of the transition
- Inspected under report cards (since Nov 2025)
- 1,986 schools
- Holding a grade from the old system
- 8,742 schools
- Old grade confirmed by a later ungraded visit
- 6,730 schools
- Ungraded visit only: no current grade
- 1,777 schools
- No published inspection outcome
- 3,694 schools
The new system: report cards (November 2025 onwards)
Instead of one overall grade, inspectors now rate up to nine areas of a school separately: safeguarding, curriculum & teaching, achievement, attendance & behaviour, personal development & wellbeing, inclusion, leadership & governance, and, where relevant, early years and post-16 provision.
Each area uses a five-point scale: Exceptional · Strong standard · Expected standard · Needs attention · Urgent improvement. Safeguarding is judged separately as Met / Not met.
On the SchoolFacts map, report-card schools are coloured by their Achievement area; every popup and school page shows all nine areas.
The old system: overall effectiveness (before November 2025)
Schools not yet inspected under report cards still hold a single overall-effectiveness grade: Outstanding · Good · Requires improvement · Inadequate. These grades remain official until the school's first report-card inspection, but many date back years.
Between inspections, Ofsted also made shorter ungraded visits which could confirm, but not change, a school's grade ("School remains Good"). Where that is a school's most recent signal, SchoolFacts colours it by the confirmed grade and says so. Since September 2024 ungraded outcomes no longer name a grade ("standards maintained"); schools whose only recent signal is one of these are shown as No current grade, not coloured. Many were graded Good or Outstanding years ago, but those grades pre-date Ofsted's current data file, so we say "no current grade" rather than guess.
How to compare schools fairly
Never read a report-card area grade as equivalent to an old overall grade; they measure different things on different scales. Look at the inspection date, read the areas, and weigh recent evidence (results, absence, admissions demand) alongside the inspection. Every SchoolFacts page states which system applies and when the school was inspected.
Common questions
- What are Ofsted report cards?
- From November 2025, Ofsted grades schools across up to nine separate areas (such as achievement, attendance and safeguarding) on a five-point scale (Exceptional, Strong standard, Expected standard, Needs attention, Urgent improvement), instead of a single overall grade.
- How do report cards differ from the old Ofsted grades?
- The old system gave one overall-effectiveness grade: Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate. Report cards replace that single grade with separate grades for each area, on a different scale, so the two are not equivalent and should not be read as the same thing.
- Which schools still have an old Ofsted grade?
- Schools not yet inspected under report cards keep their most recent overall-effectiveness grade, which stays official until their first report-card inspection, though many of these grades date back years.
- What does “No current grade” mean on SchoolFacts?
- It means the school's most recent Ofsted visit was an ungraded inspection that did not name a grade, and its last graded inspection is too old to appear in Ofsted's current data file. SchoolFacts shows this honestly rather than guessing.
- How does SchoolFacts show the two systems?
- Every school page and map popup states which inspection system applies and when the school was inspected. A report-card area grade is never presented as an old overall grade, or vice versa.