Ofsted’s Big Listen

The ‘Big Listen’ consultation by Ofsted sought the views of school staff, education organisations and parents on schools, safeguarding, SEND, teacher training, social care and further education.

Over 16,000 people responded to the consultation, including feedback from 10,000 teachers, leaders and other professionals who work in schools. As a result, the following changes will come into effect:

• Ofsted will now give leaders notice of all routine, graded and ungraded, inspections on a Monday, in new a approach to be piloted over the Autumn term. Inspectors will then visit schools on a Tuesday and Wednesday and write reports on Thursdays.
• Ofsted has pledged to consult “later this academic year” on creating a reformed education inspection framework (EIF) for schools, early years and FE and skills, learning from the Big Listen and accommodate the government’s pledge to rollout report cards from September 2025.
• It will also make sure the inspection process is appropriate to the school phase and type and take contexts into account via ‘area insights’ as part of new report cards.
• Ofsted will consult on introducing a “criterion”, understood to be Ofsted’s new word for sub judgments, for inclusion within the report card to “evaluate whether schools are providing high-quality support for disadvantaged and vulnerable children. Ofsted will be “starting from the position of local schools for local children”, with settings risking being graded down if they turn SEND children away.
• It is being reported that attendance may become a criterion too. The report cards will also include “a separate safeguarding criterion”, distinct from leadership and management.
• From this month, Ofsted will pilot a new approach to safeguarding reporting in graded inspections. If a school is ‘good’ or better in all other areas but fails in safeguarding and inspectors think the leadership has the capacity to fix this, they can call the inspection incomplete and return within three months to complete it, withholding judgment in the meantime. Ofsted will make it clearer what inspectors are looking for when they review a school’s central record.
• Ofsted said it will work with ministers on upcoming legislation to allow it to inspect multi-academy trusts, but has not put a timescale on the reform. They also “strongly” believe the reform should be expanded to cover all school groups.