Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced plans in September to scrap the use of single-phrase ratings for state schools “with immediate effect”.
Instead, those inspected during the next academic year will be graded on areas including the quality of education, behaviour, personal development and leadership seen by inspectors ahead of the introduction of in-depth report cards from September 2025.
Phillipson describes the single-phrase system – which sees schools, early years settings and the work of children’s services departments, among others, rated “outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement to be good” or “inadequate” – as “low information for parents and high stakes for schools”.
In line with this move, Ofsted’s national director of social care Yvette Stanley confirmed to CYP Now that single-phrase judgments for children’s services and early years inspections will also go, but with a caveat. “We’re travelling in the same direction but we might need to go at a different pace,” she says.
Ofsted’s Big Listen
The decision follows Ofsted’s Big Listen, the biggest sector consultation undertaken in the inspectorate’s history, which gathered more than 20,000 responses from professionals working with children, parents and young people themselves.
It was launched after an inquest into the death of Caversham Primary School head teacher Ruth Perry ruled that the results of an inadequate Ofsted inspection contributed to her suicide. The school has since had its rating uplifted to good.
Greater barriers
The policy will be extended across children’s services providers including local authorities, adoption and foster care services and children’s homes, as well as early years settings, Stanley explains.
However, she says that timeframes for the roll-out will differ greatly from implementation of the policy in schools with single-phrase judgments for children’s services providers likely to be used until April 2026 due to the constraints of a regulatory year which runs in line with the financial calendar.
Stanley says that while the inspectorate expected the scrapping of judgments to impact all areas it inspects, “there are lots more things to consider in terms of that connection into the overall effectiveness grade in social care and early years”.
She cites funding as a key example of an issue affecting the early years with settings’ financial status and uptake of children reflected in their overall effectiveness grade (see box).
Within children’s social care, Stanley explains that the Care Standards Act “expects local authorities to place children in good and outstanding settings” which could require legislative change before the new policy is introduced.
“Our systems can only cope with so many changes at the same time so we will need to manage all of those things carefully through the process of introducing the report cards,” Stanley says.
Existing systems
The inspectorate’s response to the Big Listen states that scrapping single-phrase judgments from its inspection regime for children’s social care, will “allow us to give a set of assessments and to maintain a proportionate and risk-based approach to inspection”.
The introduction of report cards “will give more nuance to allow us to pinpoint and call out local, regional and national systemic failings”, it adds.
However, Carole Willis, chief executive of National Foundation for Educational Research, urges Ofsted not to make the report cards “too complex”.
She says it is important that “any steps to reform the system are carefully designed to consider the potential wider and longer-term implications” of a shift towards narrative judgments among professionals, children and families.
The current use of some ungraded inspections including area SEND inspections and joint targeted area inspections, designed to assess multi-agency working, will support the sector in its transition towards narrative judgments, Stanley adds.
Following both types of inspections local authorities receive a letter outlining inspectors’ main findings as well as some strengths and areas for improvement.
Sector reaction
Children’s services leaders who responded to the Big Listen described single-phrase judgments as “oversimplifying the complexities of providers and not providing a full picture of their performance”.
The current regime “creates stress rather than fostering improvement” across all areas Ofsted inspects, according to sector leaders.
They called for “a more detailed and nuanced reporting method” designed to “highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the provider” across all aspects of the sector.
Social care professionals highlighted children’s safeguarding, support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and a focus on children’s mental health and wellbeing as being priorities the sector would like to see on report cards.
Former schools minister Lord Jim Knight, who chaired an independent review of Ofsted in 2023 following Perry’s death, says the move away from single-phrase judgments “shows that Ofsted and the government are taking seriously the impact of these inspections on professionals”.
‘Unrealistic demands’
Knight’s Beyond Ofsted inquiry, set up by the National Education Union, criticised the current inspections system for placing “unrealistic demands” on professionals and delivering “short snapshot judgments by fewer than a handful of inspectors”.
In its response to the Big Listen, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) shared concerns about single-phrase judgments, saying they “tell a partial and too often a punitive story” and the Local Government Association questioned how the judgments “can accurately reflect the complexities of the child protection system”.
Rachael Wardell, ADCS vice president for 2024/25 says: “Using one word, or a short phrase, to describe a school, a children’s social care department or an entire system in the case of SEND, does not make sense.”
Knight adds that while the sector “needs to be looking at what is going to be on those report cards” to truly support Ofsted’s decision, he foresees some positives based on early plans, including improving the recruitment and retention of practitioners.
“I believe that the stress that inspections in their current form can cause is linked directly to recruitment and retention issues we are seeing across public services, so scrapping the single-phrase judgments will be a positive step in tackling that,” he says.
Further consultation
Ofsted says the sector will be invited to share views on what report cards will look like through further public consultation.
It has also appointed seven “external reference groups” of stakeholders to help it overhaul how inspection decisions are reported, including one chaired by Stanley to oversee changes across both children’s social care and the early years.
Members include ADCS representative Jo Fisher, executive director of children’s services at Hertfordshire County Council, and Social Work England chief executive Colum Conway.
Mark Kerr, chief executive of the Children’s Homes Association, National Association of Special Schools’ chief Claire Dorer, the National Association of Fostering Providers’ chief Harvey Gallagher and Katherine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of care charity Become, are also on the board alongside Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel De Souza.
A separate group will examine academic insight and evidence linked to social care and includes the British Association of Social Workers’ England national director Maris Stratulis and The Children’s Society’s national programme manager James Simmonds-Read.
With at least 18 months until report cards look likely to be implemented in children’s social care Stanley’s “different pace” of change compared with plans for state schools appears to be slow. However, with the sector behind the decision to end single-phrase judgments the “direction of travel” remains one it is cautiously optimistic about.
Early years leaders on negative impact of inspection system
Single-word judgments cause “deep frustration” for early years providers, the Big Listen reveals, leading to anxiety for providers due to the potential consequences of getting a negative judgment on “funding and business viability”.
Ofsted’s national director of social care Yvette Stanley says that while a timeframe for change has not been laid out for the sector, it is likely to take between 12 and 18 months for reforms to take place.
Like social care, plans to introduce “more nuanced” reporting of standards in settings will be subject to further consultation with the sector.
Early years organisation chief executives represented in the inspectorate’s advisory group for social care and the early years include Helen Donohoe of the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, June O’Sullivan from the London Early Years Foundation and Purnima Tanuku of the National Day Nurseries Association.
Through the consultation, Ofsted must “re-engage with the sector to develop a fair system built on mutual respect”, Tanuku says.
Meanwhile, Ofsted’s report on sector views shared as part of the Big Listen states that early years professionals said that the impact of inspections on their mental health potentially affects the quality of care and education. “They said that some professionals leave the sector due to the pressure,” it states.
In its response, Ofsted vows to consult on introducing report cards, “so parents and carers can have more nuanced reporting about the strengths of providers”.
