Ofsted
Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. They inspect services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. Ofsted also inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people.
Ofsted’s role is to make sure that organisations providing education, training and care services in England do so to a high standard for children and students.
Every week, Ofsted carry out inspections and regulatory visits throughout England and publish the results online.
Ofsted report directly to Parliament and are independent & impartial.
Ofsted are responsible for inspecting maintained schools and academies, some independent schools and many other educational institutions and programmes outside of higher education, childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training.
Ofsted also regulate a range of early years and children’s social care services, making sure they’re suitable for children and potentially vulnerable young people.
They publish reports of their findings so they can be used to improve the overall quality of education and training, informing policymakers about the effectiveness of these services.
Ofsted is a member of the National Preventive Mechanism which monitors and reports on places of detention.
Ofsted priorities will ensure that:
- All of their work is evidence-led
- Their evaluation tools and frameworks are valid and reliable
- Frameworks are fair
- They aim to reduce inspection burdens and make their expectations and findings clear
- They target their time and resources where they can lead directly to improvement
You can find out more about the Ofsted priorities in the summary of the Ofsted 2017 to 2022 strategy.
