Ofsted ratings explained: the new report card grades and school choice
Ofsted ratings in 2026: the five report card grades, whether expected standard is good, how safeguarding is judged and how to read an older Ofsted report.
Ofsted no longer gives schools a single rating such as Outstanding or Good. Since 10 November 2025, state-funded schools in England have been inspected under a new framework that produces a report card. Each area of school life gets its own grade on a five-point scale, from urgent improvement to exceptional, and safeguarding is reported separately as met or not met. There is no overall grade.
Most schools have not had a report card yet, so you will often be comparing a new report card with an older, differently graded report. This guide explains the new grades, what the first report cards show, how to read an older report, and how much weight Ofsted deserves when you choose a school.
The new Ofsted grades at a glance
The five grades, from highest to lowest:
| Grade | What Ofsted says it means | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional | Practice among the very best nationally, which other schools can learn from | The school is expected to share its practice |
| Strong standard | Excellent, consistent work that makes a real difference for pupils | No follow-up monitoring for this grade |
| Expected standard | The school is doing everything it should. Ofsted calls this a high standard, shown in green | No follow-up monitoring for this grade |
| Needs attention | Work is needed to reach the expected standard. Ofsted says this is not a fail | A follow-up monitoring inspection, which can change the grade |
| Urgent improvement | Bigger problems that need fixing quickly | The school is normally placed in special measures or significant improvement, and monitored |
Ofsted is clear that the new grades cannot be compared with the old ones. Strong standard is not a new name for Good, and exceptional is not a new name for Outstanding.
How inspectors decide a grade
The grades work as a ladder. For each area, inspectors first check whether the school meets every expected standard in Ofsted's school inspection toolkit. Only if it does do they look at the strong standards, and only a school that meets all of those can be considered for exceptional. If any expected standard is missing, the area is normally graded needs attention, or urgent improvement if one of the more serious warning signs applies. The current version of the toolkit applies to inspections from 7 September 2026.
What a report card covers
Every full inspection of a state-funded school grades six core areas:
- Inclusion: how well the school meets the needs of all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
- Curriculum and teaching
- Achievement
- Attendance and behaviour
- Personal development and wellbeing
- Leadership and governance
Two more areas are graded where they apply: early years, for schools with nursery or Reception children, and post-16 provision, for schools with a sixth form. Safeguarding sits alongside the grades as met or not met.
Under the grades, the report card explains what inspectors found in each area and sets out next steps. It also gives background data recorded at the time of the inspection, such as the number of pupils.
Report cards are not only for schools. Nurseries, childminders, colleges and apprenticeship providers inspected by Ofsted moved to them on 10 November 2025, and independent schools inspected by Ofsted followed in January 2026. Independent schools that belong to an association are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) instead, which gives no overall grade and reports on the extent to which a school meets the Independent School Standards. Our guide to state and independent schools covers the wider differences.
What the first report cards show
Ofsted's first official statistics on the new framework, published in June 2026, cover the 921 full inspections carried out between 10 November 2025 and 31 March 2026:
| Area | Expected standard or better | Needs attention | Urgent improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inclusion | 89% | 9% | 1% |
| Curriculum and teaching | 77% | 20% | 2% |
| Achievement | 70% | 27% | 3% |
| Attendance and behaviour | 85% | 14% | 2% |
| Personal development and wellbeing | 95% | 5% | 1% |
| Leadership and governance | 85% | 12% | 2% |
Across the same inspections, 73% of schools received a mix of grades, and 16% were graded expected standard in all six core areas. Safeguarding was met in 99% of inspections. Four per cent of schools had urgent improvement in at least one area, and 3% had exceptional in at least one.
Two things follow for parents. A mixed report card is normal, not a warning sign. And expected standard is the most common grade in every area, so a school graded expected standard is typical of the schools inspected so far, not below average. Ofsted cautions that these inspections cover only 4% of state-funded schools and are not representative, partly because lower-performing schools are inspected more often and the first 125 schools inspected in November 2025 volunteered.
How to read an older Ofsted report
Because most schools have not yet had a report card, you need to know which system a report comes from. Check the inspection date first.
| Inspection date | What the report shows |
|---|---|
| Before September 2024 | An overall effectiveness grade (Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate) plus separate key judgements |
| September 2024 to 9 November 2025 | No overall grade, but separate grades for quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management, plus early years and sixth form where relevant |
| From 10 November 2025 | A report card with five-point grades for each area and safeguarding met or not met |
Some older reports are ungraded inspections, which checked whether a school still appeared to merit its previous grade rather than grading it again. On the Ofsted reports website, a school's report card is published on its page after its next inspection, with earlier reports listed at the end.
A few points help you judge how much an older report still tells you:
- Schools are inspected roughly every four years, and by law within five school years of the previous inspection, so a report can describe a school as it was several years and possibly several headteachers ago.
- Some schools are due an earlier first report card, around two and a half years after their last report, for example where the last grade was Requires improvement or an ungraded inspection raised concerns.
- A school that reopens under a new unique reference number (URN), for example after a change of status, counts as a new school. Ofsted usually carries out its first full inspection in its third year, and any older report belongs to the school it replaced.
How much should Ofsted drive your choice?
Ofsted is a useful signal, and report cards give you far more to work with than one word did. But a report card records what inspectors found over two days against a national toolkit. It cannot tell you whether a school suits your child, and it is easy to give it more weight than it can bear.
These habits make Ofsted more useful and less misleading:
- Read the areas that matter most for your child. Inclusion matters if your child has SEND, early years if they are starting Reception, and post-16 provision if you are choosing a sixth form.
- Read the text and next steps, not just the colours. Two schools with the same grade can have quite different strengths.
- Check the date, and whether a monitoring inspection has followed a needs attention or urgent improvement grade.
- Put inspection alongside results. Our guide to school performance tables explains the headline measures.
- Visit, and ask the school what it is doing about any next steps in its report card.
- Be realistic about admissions. A school only helps if you have a fair chance of a place, so read our guide to school admissions in England.
For the wider decision, including what to look for on a visit, see how to choose the right school in England.
How FindMySchool helps
With no overall Ofsted grade, and schools spread across three different reporting systems, comparing schools at a glance is harder. Our FMS Inspection score is a 1 to 10 score built from each school's inspection findings, including the area grades on new report cards, so you can compare more than 22,000 schools in England on one scale whichever inspectorate assessed them. It is our own measure, not an official Ofsted or ISI rating, and it works best alongside the report itself.
- See each school's FMS Inspection score on its profile, and use the Ofsted reports hub to find a state school's latest Ofsted report.
- Compare schools side by side on inspection and results, or search for schools near you.
- If you want a personalised shortlist, School Match suggests primary or secondary schools based on your priorities and location. You need a free account to see your results, and your first result is free.
Before you lean on any Ofsted report, do three things: check when the school was last inspected and under which system, read the grades and reasons for the areas that matter for your child, and line the inspection up against results, admissions and a visit. That turns a label into a genuine part of the decision rather than the whole of it.
Frequently asked questions
Since 10 November 2025, Ofsted grades each area of a school on a five-point scale: exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention and urgent improvement. There is no overall grade. Safeguarding is reported separately as met or not met.