What Are the Ofsted Evaluation Areas? A Guide for Leaders

A practical guide for headteachers, principals, proprietors, governors and trustees

One word became several grades, and the first practical question every leader asked was a simple one: what exactly are we being graded on now?

It’s a fair question and the answer takes a little longer than it used to. Many leaders tell us they understood the headline change immediately and were still, months later, not entirely confident about where a particular part of school life now sits.

That matters more than it sounds. Under secure fit grading, every standard within an area has to be met to reach a grade, so knowing which area a thing belongs to is the difference between fixing it and missing it.

In this guide we’ll set out each evaluation area, what inspectors look for in it, and where safeguarding, early years and post-16 fit.

What Are the Six Ofsted Evaluation Areas?

For schools, the six core areas are:

• Curriculum and teaching
• Achievement
• Attendance and behaviour
• Personal development and wellbeing
• Inclusion
• Leadership and governance

Each is graded on the five point scale. Additional areas apply for early years and post-16 provision where relevant, and safeguarding is evaluated separately as met or not met.

There’s no overall grade. A reader looks across the areas to understand a school, and the reasoning for each appears in the narrative on your report card.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Curriculum and Teaching?

Whether the curriculum is well designed and whether it’s taught well enough for pupils to learn it.

That means sequencing, so that what pupils learn builds towards something. It means subject knowledge and how teaching is adapted for the pupils actually in the room. It means assessment that tells teachers something useful rather than generating data.

This is an area where secure fit bites. A school with a strong curriculum in most subjects and one foundation subject that’s been without a leader for two years will find the grade held there. A Subject Leadership Review or a Curriculum Intent and Sequencing Review usually finds that before an inspector does.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Achievement?

What pupils know and can do, and whether they’re making the progress they should.

Inspectors consider published and official data about attainment and progress over time, including against similar schools, following the introduction of the statistical model grouping schools in similar contexts. They also look specifically at the attainment and progress of disadvantaged pupils.

In special schools and alternative provision, Ofsted recognises that published outcomes data may not give a clear picture of the progress pupils are making. Being able to explain what progress looks like for your cohort, with evidence, is therefore a leadership task rather than a data task. Progress and Outcomes Analysis is built for exactly that conversation.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Attendance and Behaviour?

These are graded together as one area, which surprises schools that had thought of them separately.

On behaviour, inspectors look at whether the school is calm and orderly, how behaviour is managed, and whether expectations are consistent. On attendance, they look at overall figures, persistent absence, and the difference between groups.

This is the area where we most often see a grade held by secure fit. Behaviour is calm, purposeful and well led, and attendance or persistent absence data doesn’t meet the standard. The narrative will frequently praise behaviour warmly in the same paragraph that identifies attendance as the reason for the grade.

If your attendance work isn’t owned by a named person with time to do it, that’s worth addressing. A School Attendance Review and Persistent Absence Support exist for this.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Personal Development and Wellbeing?

Whether the school develops pupils beyond the academic, and whether their wellbeing is genuinely supported.

That covers the wider curriculum, character and citizenship, preparation for the next stage, mental health support, and relationships and sex education. For post-16 and specialist settings it includes preparation for adulthood, which is the whole purpose of the provision rather than an addition to it.

The renewed framework also brought staff wellbeing into scope within leadership and governance, which is a genuinely welcome development and one that leaders should read as permission rather than as another demand.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Inclusion?

How well the school works for pupils facing barriers to their learning or wellbeing, evidenced substantially through case sampling of individual children.

It covers pupils who are disadvantaged, those with SEND, those known to children’s social care, and a contextualised group facing other barriers. Ofsted has been explicit that inclusion is the responsibility of all leaders and staff rather than one named person.

We cover this area in detail in the Ofsted inclusion evaluation area, because it’s the newest and the one schools are least prepared for.

What Do Inspectors Look for in Leadership and Governance?

Whether leaders know their school, act on what they know, and are held to account for it.

Inspectors speak with governors, trustees or the proprietor to understand how strategic leadership works in practice, including how policies are monitored, how leaders are supported and challenged, and how the school makes sure every pupil can thrive. Staff wellbeing sits here too.

Two things affect this grade more than boards expect. Whether the school’s self-evaluation matches what inspectors find, which is why the planning call matters so much. And whether challenge from governors can actually be evidenced, rather than having happened in corridors and never been recorded.

An External Review of Governance tests both, and it’s the area where an outside view is hardest to substitute for.

Where Do Safeguarding, Early Years and Post-16 Fit?

Safeguarding is evaluated separately and reported as met or not met rather than on the five point scale. It isn’t one of the graded areas and it’s looked at on every inspection.

Early years is a separate evaluation area where a school has provision for that age range, including school-based nurseries.

Post-16 is a separate area where a school has sixth form provision. In specialist settings this is frequently the part that receives least leadership attention and where an inspection finds most to say, because preparation for adulthood is the measure that matters and it’s easy to let drift.

From Our Experience

The most common problem we find isn’t a weak area. It’s an area with no owner.

Schools tend to have somebody clearly responsible for curriculum, safeguarding and behaviour. Attendance, personal development and inclusion are more often shared, which sounds collaborative and frequently means nobody is looking across the whole of it.

Many leaders tell us the useful moment was assigning each area to a named person and asking them to read the standards themselves. The gaps surfaced within a fortnight, and most of them were things somebody had half known about for a year.

We often see schools misplace a known weakness too. A team worried about behaviour spends a term on behaviour, and the grade is held by attendance in the same area. Knowing which area a thing sits in is not pedantry under a secure fit model. It’s the difference between fixing the right thing and the wrong one.

A Common Misconception

“The evaluation areas are the old judgements with new names.”

Some of the content is familiar, and the structure isn’t, and treating it as a renaming exercise will cost you.

Inclusion is genuinely new as a standalone graded area. Attendance and behaviour have been combined, which changes how a grade is reached. Safeguarding has moved off the scale entirely. And the shift from best fit to secure fit means a strength no longer compensates for a gap in the same area, which is a bigger change than any of the naming.

Mapping the new areas onto the old judgements produces a self-evaluation that feels familiar and misses things. Reading the actual standards in the toolkit for your setting is the only reliable route, and it’s a term’s work rather than an afternoon’s.

Questions for Leaders

• Does every evaluation area have a named owner who has read its standards?
• Are we clear which area each of our known weaknesses actually sits in?
• Who owns attendance here, and do they have time to do it?
• Can our governors describe each area and our position in it?
• Have we mapped the new areas onto the old judgements rather than reading the standards?

Our Perspective

Six grades take longer to explain than one word, and they tell you far more.

The real gain for leaders is precision. You can now know exactly which area, and which standard within it, is holding you back. That’s a considerably better position than a single adjective and a guess about what it referred to.

Use the areas as a structure for reflection rather than a set of boxes. Each one describes something worth doing well for the children in your school, and a school that strengthens its weakest area has improved the education of the pupils sitting in it, whatever anybody grades it afterwards.