The education secretary has scrapped single-word headline grades for schools in a major shakeup of Ofsted’s inspection function.
Under the current system, schools are inspected by Ofsted and receive reports with grades of "outstanding", "good", "requires improvement", or "inadequate".
For this year only, parents will receive reports with four grades across the existing sub-categories of "quality of education", "behaviour and attitudes", "personal development" and "leadership and management".
Then, from September 2025, Ofsted will introduce School Report Cards, which DfE says will “provide parents with a full and comprehensive assessment of how schools are performing and ensure that inspections are more effective in driving improvement”. Labour pointed to research by Public First for the Laidlaw Foundation in 2023, which found 77% of parents were in support of the report-cards plan.
The government has also scrapped the current approach that sees schools that receive consecutive "requires improvement" grades turned into academies. Instead, struggling schools will receive support from a high-performing school to help drive up standards. Schools “of the most serious concern” – those that would have received "inadequate" grades under the scrapped system – will, in some cases, still be transferred to new management.
Struggling schools will also get local support from new regional improvement teams, which will be introduced in early 2025 to help schools to “quickly and directly address areas of weakness”. Like the changes to the grade system, the teams were promised in Labour’s election manifesto, which said they would “enhance school-to-school support, and spread best practice”.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said: “The need for Ofsted reform to drive high and rising standards for all our children in every school is overwhelmingly clear.
“The removal of headline grades is a generational reform and a landmark moment for children, parents, and teachers.
“Single-headline grades are low information for parents and high stakes for schools. Parents deserve a much clearer, much broader picture of how schools are performing – that’s what our report cards will provide.
“This government will make inspection a more powerful, more transparent tool for driving school improvement. We promised change, and now we are delivering.”
DfE said the announcement followed engagement with the education sector and the family of headteacher Ruth Perry. Perry took her own life in January following an Ofsted inspection – with her sister saying she had described it as “the worst day” of her life. A coroner’s inquest found the Ofsted inspection process had contributed to her death.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, a union and professional association for school leaders, said the scrapping of the headline grades is a “welcome interim measure”. He added that there is “much work to do now in order to design a fundamentally different long-term approach to inspection and we look forward to working with government to achieve that”.
Jason Elsom, chief executive of Parentkind, a charity which helps to give parents a voice in their children’s education, called the reforms a “big step in the right direction”.