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More than a third of schools inspected by Ofsted this year face a return monitoring inspection from the watchdog, prompting fears over school leaders’ wellbeing and inspectors’ workload.

����Vlog can reveal that some 37 per cent of schools that Ofsted has inspected in 2025-26 will now face a monitoring inspection over an area of concern found by inspectors.

This is more than twice the proportion of schools that triggered monitoring visits in the last full year of graded inspections under the previous inspection framework.

Headteachers’ leaders have described the increase as “deeply concerning” and warned that more monitoring inspections will mean more pressure on leaders.

And the union representing senior Ofsted inspectors has said that, in response to �ձ��’ findings, it will raise concerns with the watchdog about inspector workload.

Ofsted monitoring inspections

Ofsted has said its monitoring inspections have been designed with teacher wellbeing in mind and are aimed at preventing schools from being stuck on “low grades for years”.

The figures are based on FFT Education Datalab analysis for ����Vlog of 1,360 published school inspection reports up to May of this year.

Ofsted launched its latest report card inspection framework in November, which judges schools across a five-point grading scale on at least six different evaluation areas.

Some 509 out of 1,360 schools inspected under the framework will face a monitoring inspection, based on the latest Ofsted data provided by FFT.

Of that group, 163 schools face a return visit based on just one “needs attention” grade, which is enough to trigger a monitoring inspection based on the school watchdog’s criteria.

The proportion of schools facing a monitoring visit under this framework is so far more than twice as high as in the last full year of fully graded inspections under the previous inspection framework.

shows that 16 per cent of schools inspected in that year had outcomes that would trigger monitoring inspections - they received overall “inadequate” or “requires improvement” judgements. Some 15 per cent of schools were rated as “requires improvement” and 1 per cent were rated as “inadequate”.

This 2023-24 total does not count the schools previously rated as “good” or “outstanding” that had section 8 ungraded inspections, which would result in the school retaining the grade unless Ofsted decided there was a need to convert to a graded inspection.

Across the schools sector, at the end of 2023-24, there were just 10 per cent of schools (8 per cent rated “requires improvement” and 2 per cent rated “inadequate”) with an inspection judgement of below “good” at their most recent inspection. These would have been facing monitoring inspections.

Report card inspections

The Labour government scrapped single overall effectiveness grades with immediate effect in September 2024, and Ofsted has since introduced its report card framework.

This framework gives graded judgements across at least six different evaluation areas on a new five-point scale: “exceptional”, “strong standard”, “expected standard”, “needs attention” and “urgent improvement”.

Ofsted has said it will return to carry out monitoring inspections at schools in the following scenarios:

• Schools graded as “urgent improvement” in an evaluation area will receive a monitoring inspection each term.
• Schools deemed to require significant improvement - judged as “urgent improvement” in any evaluation area or “not met” in safeguarding - will receive up to five extra inspections within 18 months.
• Schools that are judged to require special measures - graded as “urgent improvement” in leadership and governance or “not met” in safeguarding, and given the lowest grade in at least one other evaluation area - will receive up to six inspections within 24 months.
• Ofsted will also monitor schools that receive a “needs attention” grade in any of the evaluation areas.

There had been concerns that this approach would lead to a big increase in the number of monitoring inspections Ofsted has to carry out.

Lee Owston, Ofsted’s national director of education, told ����Vlog earlier this year that the inspectorate has not produced an estimate of how many schools are likely to need monitoring as a result of inspection outcomes.

However, the inspectorate said it was confident it could afford the number of monitoring inspections required within its existing budget.

‘Even more damaging to wellbeing’

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “These latest figures are deeply concerning, and it is precisely what we warned would happen.

“The increased number of judgements, combined with the secure-fit methodology, means that schools can easily find themselves falling below the new ‘expected standard’ and thus subject to monitoring.

“There is no escaping the fact that monitoring means more pressure on schools and school leaders, which, in turn, has a negative impact on wellbeing.”

Questions have been raised about Ofsted’s use of a secure-fit methodology in the inspector toolkits it uses to determine grades. This approach means that a school can miss out on an “expected standard” or a “strong standard” grade unless every single standard in the grade descriptors has been met.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The increase in monitoring is a product of inspection reforms that just haven’t been thought through properly and are in danger of heaping ever more pressure and workload on education staff, who are already often working well beyond reasonable capacity.

“Ofsted’s role should be to reflect the performance of the education system in a fair and proportionate manner, not create a new work stream in which a large number of schools are stuck in a constant cycle of monitoring and inspection. It is part of a picture of a new system which is proving to be even more damaging to wellbeing than the previous system.”

The FDA union, which represents Ofsted’s HMI, said it will raise concerns with the inspectorate about the rise of monitoring inspections.

Matt Newman, the union’s national officer for Ofsted, said: “Excessive workloads are already a huge issue for many of our members in Ofsted. If more monitoring inspections are being pushed towards HMI then Ofsted need to ensure there is adequate resourcing in place.

“The FDA has long campaigned to ensure our members in Ofsted are treated fairly in terms of their workloads. We will be raising this issue with the employer, and we expect to receive assurances that appropriate recruitment strategies are in place moving forward.”

An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Monitoring inspections under the renewed framework were designed with wellbeing in mind - to stop schools being stuck with low grades for years, waiting for their next full inspection.

“These are highly focused visits, looking just at the specific area that needs attention. Where we find the necessary improvements have been made, report cards will be updated in real time, to reassure parents and reflect the progress the school has made.”

Ofsted no longer carries out ungraded inspections of schools under its current framework.