If your school has received a “needs attention” or “urgent improvement” grade under any evaluation area at your last inspection, your school will later undergo at least one monitoring inspection. It is expected that your school will work toward an “expected standard” grade under the specified evaluation area/s, with Ofsted returning at set intervals to monitor progress.
Your school’s introduction to the monitoring programme
If you’re a leader, you will receive an introductory monitoring call within 3 months of the publication of your school’s full inspection report card. This will take place before 10am and on any day of the week.
The HMI should introduce themselves and arrange a longer introductory monitoring programme call, usually later that day.
You can bring at least one other senior leader to assist and support you in the call and, where applicable, your school’s nominee. During this call, the HMI should explain the monitoring inspection process and how many monitoring inspections you may expect. You should also be invited to share any actions you have already taken to work toward an expected standard for relevant evaluation areas, any evidence you have of this work, and any support you have received.
Timeframe
If your school received a “needs attention” grade under any evaluation area, but not an “urgent improvement” grade, you should receive a monitoring inspection no later than two years after the publication of your school’s report card.
If your school received an “urgent improvement” grade under any evaluation area, this means you will enter into a monitoring programme. Under this programme you can expect a termly monitoring inspection, but “the number of inspections within the monitoring programme will vary depending on the extent of the issues identified at the last full inspection and the category of concern that the school is in:
- schools that require significant improvement may receive up to 5 on-site monitoring inspections within 18 months of the last full inspection report card being published
- schools that require special measures may receive up to 6 on-site monitoring inspections within 24 months of the last full inspection report card being published.”
Monitoring inspections will continue until inspectors have gathered sufficient evidence to lift your school out of a category of concern, which may happen before the fifth or sixth monitoring inspection.
Getting a grade change
Needs attention
If inspectors gather enough evidence to support a grade change to “expected standard” during a monitoring inspection, they can update your school’s report card accordingly.
Urgent improvement
If your school received an “urgent improvement” grade under any evaluation area at your last inspection, this means your school is in a category of concern and must undergo another full inspection for this category to be lifted. Prior to another full inspection, your school will enter a monitoring programme.
If monitoring inspection evidence indicates that a school has improved significantly, so that if a full inspection were carried out no evaluation area would be graded “urgent improvement”, the monitoring inspection should be upgraded to a full inspection or a full inspection should be scheduled at the earliest opportunity.
After each monitoring inspection, the inspectors will produce an updated report card for your school.
What to expect during inspection
If you’re a leader, you should receive a notification phone call from Ofsted up to 5 working days before the start of the monitoring inspection. You will arrange a planning call with the inspector, where you’ll discuss practicalities, your school’s context and any changes to leadership and governance, the actions you have taken to bring relevant evaluation areas to an expected standard (and any support you’ve received for this).
Inspectors may choose to conduct many of the same activities in a full inspection (e.g. learning walks, focused conversations with senior leaders and case sampling), but these will be centred around the evaluation area(s) that are the focus of the inspection. The inspection is an opportunity for your school to evidence the impact of work that you’ve taken to improve.
If you’re a leader or nominee, you can also expect to have reflection meetings with inspectors during the inspection process, and a final feedback meeting with inspectors.
See our advice on full inspections to understand what may happen and what to do if you have any concerns.
Focused monitoring inspections
Ofsted can carry out a focused monitoring inspection of any school, at any time, to investigate concerns about schools.
Focused monitoring inspections are meant to focus on the issues that have prompted the inspection and will not result in any grades. Inspectors are not meant to investigate a specific complaint, but rather wider aspects of the school relevant to the complaint.
Focused monitoring inspections normally take 1 day with 1 inspector, but sometimes a larger team is required and/or the inspection may take place over 2 days.
Your school may not receive much notice that you are about to receive a focused monitoring inspection – at most you will be notified the day before the inspection, and at the least your school will receive a call around 15 minutes before arriving on the site.
Inspectors are likely to hold conversations with senior leaders as part of a focused inspection.
If inspectors find evidence that your school may be graded “urgent improvement” for any evaluation area, or that safeguarding standards may not be met, they can upgrade the inspection to a full inspection or recommend that a full inspection be brought forward.