The Ofsted Planning Call: How to Prepare

A practical guide for headteachers, principals, proprietors and senior leaders

The phone rings and the inspection has started. Not on the day inspectors arrive, but there, in that conversation, usually with very little notice and almost always at an inconvenient moment.

Many leaders tell us the planning call was the part they’d prepared for least and found hardest. It’s understandable. There’s no audience, no folder to reach for, and a lead inspector asking questions that need answering from what you actually know about your school.

What we’d say to any leader worrying about it is this. The call isn’t a test you can fail. It’s a conversation designed to shape the inspection around your school, and leaders who’ve done honest self-evaluation find it considerably easier than they expected.

In this guide we’ll explain what happens on the call, who should be on it, what the lead inspector will ask, how to answer the self-grading question, and what to have in place long before the phone rings.

What Happens Before the Ofsted Planning Call?

Notification is short. You’ll typically get around two hours’ notice before inspectors arrive, though this varies by sector and inspection type, and the planning call happens in that window.

That’s the important practical point. You can’t prepare after the call comes. Whatever you have is what you have, which is why the real preparation is everything you did in the months before.

Use the time you do get sensibly. Get to a quiet room with a phone that works. Have your senior team told and available. And take a breath, because the tone you set in the first two minutes tends to carry.

Who Should Be on the Planning Call?

The headteacher or the person leading the school, and that’s usually enough.

Where leadership is shared, for instance under an executive arrangement or during an interim placement, make sure the person who’ll be treated as the school’s leader is on the call and can speak for the school. Confusion about who’s in charge is a poor first impression and it’s an easy one to avoid.

Your nominee, if you’re appointing one, should be identified early. Some schools bring a second senior leader in for parts of the conversation, particularly where a specific area sits with someone else. That’s fine, provided it doesn’t turn into a committee.

If you’re an interim leader who started recently, say so and give your start date in the first minute. Inspectors are entirely used to leadership changes and factoring it in early is better than it emerging later.

What Will the Lead Inspector Ask?

The call covers introductions and practicalities, understanding your school and its context, and your own evaluation of it.

Expect questions about the structure and context of the school, what’s changed recently, your view of the school’s strengths and priorities for improvement, and any significant matters the inspector should know about, including safeguarding.

Inspectors use the call to start understanding your school so they can decide, with you, what’s best to focus on during the inspection. That’s a genuinely collaborative part of the process and it’s worth treating it as one.

Where you have context that matters, this is the moment to explain it. Ofsted has been clear that context helps inspectors interpret evidence fairly, and that it never pre-determines grades. In a special school or alternative provision, where published data may not show the progress your pupils are actually making, explaining that clearly on the call matters a great deal.

How Should We Answer the Ofsted Self-Grading Question?

The lead inspector will ask where you believe the school currently sits on the five point scale for each evaluation area.

That question isn’t a trap. It’s an invitation to demonstrate that you know your own school, and answering it accurately builds credibility that lasts for the whole inspection. Answering it inaccurately, in either direction, costs credibility just as quickly.

Three things make a good answer.

Give the grade and the evidence together. Not “I’d say we’re strong on inclusion”, but what you’ve seen, against which standard. “I’ve case sampled six pupils myself this term. Provision matches plans in five and there’s a gap in one, which we’re addressing. On that basis I’d put us at expected standard moving towards strong.”

Name the weakness before they find it. A leader who identifies their own gap accurately has demonstrated exactly the self-knowledge the framework rewards. A leader whose account is contradicted by the evidence has a difficult two days ahead.

Don’t inflate to protect your staff. It feels like loyalty and it isn’t. Inspectors will find what’s there, and the gap between your account and the evidence damages the leadership judgement, which affects everyone.

What Should We Have Ready Before the Call Ever Comes?

Everything that matters here is done in advance.

An honest self-evaluation against the actual written standards in the toolkit, with a named owner for each evaluation area who could defend their grade without notes.

A clear account of your context and what it means for how your data should be read.

Case sampling you’ve done yourself. Take five or six pupils facing barriers, read their plans, and trace what they actually receive. This is the single most useful preparation available and it’s what inspectors will do too.

Agreement between you and your board. Inspectors speak to governors, trustees or the proprietor as part of leadership and governance, and two different accounts of the same school is a finding in itself.

And a safeguarding position you’ve tested rather than assumed. Inspection Preparation for Leaders Training rehearses the whole conversation with your senior team, and an Inspection Readiness Health Check tests the grading independently before someone else does.

What Happens After the Call?

Inspectors arrive and the focus you agreed together shapes the first day.

Tell your staff what’s happening, plainly and quickly. Most inspection anxiety comes from not knowing, and a short, calm briefing does more than any amount of preparation folder. It’s worth mentioning that inspectors leave the site by 5pm, which people find genuinely reassuring.

Then let the school run normally. The most common thing we see damage an inspection is a school behaving unusually, because unusual is visible and it prevents inspectors seeing what typically happens, which is what they’re there to find.

From Our Experience

Leaders who prepare for the planning call as a performance find it harder than leaders who prepare by knowing their school.

We often see senior teams rehearsing phrases and building documents, then finding the conversation goes somewhere they hadn’t scripted. The leaders who handle it best have simply done the self-evaluation honestly and can talk about their school without notes.

Many leaders tell us the moment it settled was realising they were allowed to say “I don’t know yet, and here’s how I’d find out”. That’s a perfectly good answer and considerably better than a confident one that doesn’t survive contact with the evidence.

The other pattern worth naming is the board. We regularly find a school where the head’s account and the proprietor’s account differ meaningfully, usually because nobody had compared them. Half an hour together beforehand prevents it.

A Common Misconception

“We should present the school as positively as we can on the call.”

It’s an understandable instinct and it’s the one most likely to cost you.

The planning call isn’t a pitch. It’s the inspector’s first read of whether your account of the school will match what they find, and everything that follows is calibrated against it. A school that grades itself accurately, including where it’s weak, has told the inspector that its self-evaluation can be trusted. That’s worth a great deal over two days.

There’s a better reason too. Your pupils are best served by an inspection that identifies what’s actually happening, because that’s what leads to it getting better. An accurate account, even an uncomfortable one, is the most useful thing you can offer them.

Questions for Leaders

• Could we give a grade and the evidence behind it for every evaluation area, today?
• Has anyone here case sampled a handful of pupils against their plans this term?
• Would our board give the same account of this school that we would?
• Can we explain our context clearly and briefly, without sounding defensive?
• Do we know who takes this call if the headteacher is unavailable?

Our Perspective

The planning call rewards preparation that has nothing to do with the call itself.

Schools that find it straightforward are the ones that had already done honest self-evaluation against the written standards, had a named owner for each area, and had tested their view with someone external. The conversation is then simply an account of what they already knew.

The most effective schools don’t wait to be told how they’re performing. They create regular opportunities to reflect, learn and improve, because continuous improvement leads to better outcomes for children and young people. Do that and the planning call stops being an event to survive and becomes a description of a school you already understand.