New Ofsted report cards for schools

REFORMS AIM TO GIVE MORE INFORMATION TO PARENTS

- By STEPHANIE WAREHAM

A RAFT of changes to the way Ofsted inspects schools, including new report cards with a five-point grading scale, will come into place from November.

Parents will be given more detail about their children’s education with the introduction of new-look report cards, Ofsted has confirmed.

Schools in England will be graded across a variety of different areas - including attendance, behaviour and inclusion - using a colour-coded five-point scale, which Ofsted says will provide parents with “more granularity and nuance about a provider's performance”.

After feedback from parents and education professionals, the five grades have been renamed urgent improvement, needs attention, expected standard, strong standard, and exceptional.

An independent poll by YouGov found that almost seven out of 10 parents surveyed preferred the new-look report cards to Ofsted’s current inspection reports, with nine out of 10 saying they were easy to understand. Additional monitoring inspec-