Ofsted report cards, explained

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").

When that is all a school has recently, we look further back. Ofsted's current data file only lists graded inspections from September 2019 onwards, so a school graded before that and visited only by ungraded inspections since reaches the file with no grade at all, though Ofsted published one and still shows it. For 797 schools we carry that grade forward, always labelled with its year, like Good (2019). It is Ofsted's grade, not our estimate, but it is old: of the schools holding a grade from before that cut-off that Ofsted has since re-inspected, about two thirds of the Goods held or improved, while only a quarter of the Outstandings stayed Outstanding. So a dated grade sorts below a current one in our listings, and the year travels with it everywhere. The remaining 981 schools show No current grade: no graded inspection survives to carry, or the latest ungraded visit found the school weaker, in which case carrying the old grade would flatter it.

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.

Why do some schools have no overall grade?

Ofsted stopped awarding a single overall grade in September 2024, and report cards did not begin until November 2025. Schools inspected in between were judged on four areas (quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management) with no headline grade. For these schools SchoolFacts shows the lowest of the four as an estimate, labelled as ours rather than Ofsted's, with all four judgements listed underneath. Tested against the schools inspected before the change, where Ofsted published both the areas and an overall grade, the lowest area matched the real grade 99.3% of the time and never overstated it.

Why do some grades show a year, like “Good (2019)”?

Because that is the last grade Ofsted published for the school, and nothing has replaced it. Ofsted's current data file lists graded inspections from September 2019 onwards only, so for 797 schools the grade of record has dropped out of it, even though Ofsted still shows it on its own report page. We carry it forward with its year attached so you can see how old it is, and it sorts below current grades in our listings. It is a real Ofsted grade, not an estimate, but an old one, so weigh it against the more recent evidence on the page.

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 no earlier graded inspection survives in Ofsted's records to carry forward, or the ungraded visit found the school had weakened, in which case showing the older grade would flatter it. 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.