Lee Owston sets Ofsted School Inspection Changes 2026 for September
Ofsted school inspection changes 2026 will start from September, when updated grading toolkits and guides come into force for inspectors. Lee Owston, Ofsted’s national director for education, said the changes give inspectors new material on achievement, disadvantaged pupils and inclusion.
The current toolkit will stay in use until the end of this academic year. From September, inspectors will assess what the data indicates about achievement over time, including how a school compares with similar schools, and they will look more closely at inclusion strategies and disadvantaged pupils’ results.
Lee Owston and similar schools
Owston said Ofsted and the Department for Education created a new statistical model to group similar schools together. In a blog published alongside the updated inspection materials, he said: “This provides additional information to help leaders and inspectors understand how well pupils in one school are achieving compared to schools with a similar context.”
That comparison now sits inside the inspection toolkit itself. Inspectors will consider whether pupils’ attainment and progress in national tests and examinations compare with national averages and similar schools, rather than looking at raw results alone.
Disadvantaged pupils and tests
The toolkit also adds new wording on how inspectors consider the performance of disadvantaged pupils in tests and exams. Inspectors are to look at whether disadvantaged pupils attain well, including whether their attainment is in line with the attainment of disadvantaged pupils nationally.
They will also examine whether disadvantaged pupils make appropriate progress from their starting points, including the extent to which their progress is in line with the progress of non-disadvantaged pupils nationally. For schools, that means the inspection lens now runs through both attainment and progress, not one measure on its own.
Inclusion strategy by December
Ofsted has introduced the term “leaders who have an inclusion role” within its inspection materials. When inspectors consider a school’s inclusion grade, they will look at whether leaders, alongside governors and/or trustees, have developed and published an inclusion strategy on their website.
Owston said: “This is because inclusion is the responsibility of all leaders and staff within a setting, and we want to encourage inspectors and leaders to consider this evaluation area for those within the ‘contextualised’ group and look at those with other leadership roles, beyond that of the Sendco.” The strategy should explain how the school’s overall funding allocation, including the inclusive mainstream fund, will be used to meet the specific needs of the cohort and improve inclusive practice across the school.
The Department for Education has introduced the new inclusive mainstream fund, and the government expects schools to publish inclusion strategies by December. For schools preparing for inspections from September, the immediate task is to line up those website plans with the new toolkit before inspectors start using it.
