A parent picturing an Ofsted inspection often imagines one tense lesson, one inspector at the back of the room, and a single grade that follows from it. That is not how a grade forms. Under the framework Ofsted published for inspections from September 2025, a school’s evidence builds before the inspector arrives and continues across a visit that touches far more than one classroom.
more
What happens before anyone sets foot in the school
Preparation starts with a planning call, usually done by video, where the lead inspector asks school leaders about the school’s structure, its priorities and its context. Before that call, inspectors review the school’s previous inspection report, its inspection data summary report, any complaints made to Ofsted, warning notices, and the school or trust website’s governance pages. They also check recent SEND inspection findings, the local authority’s children’s services report, responses to Ofsted’s Parent View survey, and anything reported about the school in the press.
None of that touches a single lesson. It is a paper trail assembled before a classroom door has opened.
Six pupils, tracked through the visit
On the first day, inspectors agree a sample of around six pupils with the school, a technique Ofsted calls case sampling. Schools are asked to put forward pupils with special educational needs or disabilities, pupils known to children’s social care, and pupils who face other barriers to learning. Inspectors follow those pupils’ work and progress through the visit rather than judging the school on whoever happens to be in one room at one time.
Small schools get an adjusted version of the same approach. Two inspectors work each day rather than three. Inspectors are told that a small cohort’s exam results can swing sharply from one year to the next. They are also told that a small leadership team may draw on expertise shared across a federation.
Four judgements, not one verdict
Since 2024, Ofsted has not issued the single overall word, such as “outstanding” or “requires improvement”, that used to stand for a whole school. In the 2024-25 school year, a graded inspection instead produced four separate judgements: one for leadership and management, one for the quality of education, one for personal development, and one for behaviour and attitudes. The operating guide for the newer framework recasts the underlying question again, asking inspectors to weigh how far pupils achieve, belong and thrive.
Each of those areas draws on its own evidence, gathered across the visit, rather than on one lesson feeding every judgement at once. A lead inspector also has an “educationally focused conversation” with the headteacher that can run past 90 minutes, on top of whatever time is spent in classrooms.
Why the visit itself is longer than one lesson
A standard graded inspection normally runs two days, and inspectors are notified to the school only on a Monday for a visit that follows on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Smaller primary schools already rated “good” or “outstanding” may get a single day.
Inspectors are also told to use national exam averages cautiously, especially where year groups are small, and to weigh whether what they saw of pupils’ learning across the whole school matches those results.
Who does the inspecting, and how often
The legal duty to inspect every state-funded school in England sits with Ofsted’s chief inspector, under a section of the Education Act 2005 that gives graded inspections their name: Section 5. The law sets the longest gap allowed between inspections at five school years, stretching to seven for a school whose last inspection fell before May 2021.
Schools already rated “good” or “outstanding” usually get a lighter, ungraded visit instead, known as a Section 8 inspection, to confirm the rating still holds. “Outstanding” schools were exempt from routine inspection for most of the last decade, an exemption Ofsted lifted when visits resumed after the pandemic pause ended in September 2021. A Section 8 visit can also be ordered directly by the education secretary, or triggered urgently if a concern reaches Ofsted outside the usual cycle.
Throughout an inspection, the guidance for inspectors asks for something beyond checklists: professionalism, courtesy, empathy and respect, alongside the duties both sides carry under the Equality Act 2010. A school’s grade, in other words, is less a snapshot of one lesson than a judgement built from a paper trail, a sample of named pupils, a headteacher conversation that can run past 90 minutes, and two inspectors or more working across the whole visit.
