Understanding Ofsted Report Cards: What Replaced Single-Word Grades

For years, Ofsted summed up a whole school in a single word. In November 2025 that ended: Ofsted replaced Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate with report cards. Here's what changed, what the new scale means, and how to read schools while both systems are still in use.

What changed in November 2025

Inspections from 10 November 2025 onwards produce a report card instead of an overall grade. Rather than one verdict, inspectors now judge a school across several distinct areas and report each one separately. The aim is a fuller, more honest picture, and an end to a single label deciding a school's reputation.

The new five-point scale

The areas Ofsted grades

A report card covers up to nine areas: achievement, attendance and behaviour, curriculum and teaching, inclusion, personal development and wellbeing, and leadership and governance, plus early years and sixth-form provision where they apply. Safeguarding is reported separately as simply Met or Not met, and a school can be placed in a category of concern where standards are most serious.

What about the old single-word grades?

They don't disappear overnight. A school keeps its previous grade until it is re-inspected under the new framework, and with roughly 650 schools a month converting to the new framework it will take several years to reach every school. So for now you'll see both: most schools still carry a legacy Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate, while recently inspected schools show a report card. A legacy grade is a snapshot from its inspection year, sometimes several years old.

How FindGreatSchools shows both

So you can compare like with like, we distil each report card into a single comparable badge and fold it into our overall school score, the same way we handle legacy grades, with a discount for older inspections. You can always open the full report card to see every area. We explain exactly how this works on our Ofsted report cards page.

Why inspection ratings still aren't everything

Whether report card or legacy grade, an inspection is a snapshot in time. A school's leadership, culture and community can change between visits. Pair the rating with other evidence (Progress 8, pupil demographics, destination data and, above all, your own visit) before deciding what's right for your child.