GeoRealityMatch

United Kingdom · Schools · Tracker

How Ofsted’s new report cards actually grade schools

The overall grade is gone. Six separate judgments replaced it, and they are not being handed out evenly. Every published card, aggregated, with the caveats kept in view.

245 report cards · Ofsted Management Information, Feb 2026 vintage · updates with each monthly MI release · What this sample is, and is not →

Achievement — below expected standard

23.7%

58 of 245 schools judged

Personal development and well-being — below expected standard

3.3%

8 of 245 schools judged

A school in this sample is about 7 times more likely to fall below the expected standard on achievement than on personal development and well-being. The framework’s judgments are not equally hard to pass, and that gap is the clearest early fact about how it behaves in practice.

Every judgment, every band

ExceptionalStrong standardExpected standardNeeds attentionUrgent improvement

Achievement

23.7% below expected

Curriculum and teaching

16.3% below expected

Attendance and behaviour

12.2% below expected

Leadership and governance

9.0% below expected

Inclusion

7.3% below expected

Personal development and well-being

3.3% below expected

The new top band is scarce by design: 1.2%–3.3% of judged schools receive “Exceptional”, depending on the judgment. Safeguarding is a separate binary check: not met at 2 of 245 schools.

What this sample is — and is not

  • 245 of 21,844 state-funded schools in England (1.1%). Ofsted decides which schools are inspected first, so this is a self-selecting sample with a bias of unknown direction, not a random draw of England’s schools. Treat every percentage as a fact about the inspected schools, not a forecast for the rest.
  • No overall grade exists, and none is synthesised here.The five-band report-card scale has no clean mapping to the legacy Outstanding-to-Inadequate bands; “Expected standard” sits between the old Good and Requires improvement with no equivalent.
  • Source: Ofsted Management Information, Feb 2026 release, joined to the DfE GIAS registry, the same pipeline behind the UK Regions school data. Reports publish weeks after inspection, so the newest month always undercounts at the current vintage.

Weakness travels together

36%

of schools below expected on achievement are also below on leadership, against a 9% base rate (58 schools).

62%

of schools below expected on achievement are also below on curriculum, against a 16% base rate (58 schools).

67%

of schools below expected on attendance are also below on achievement, against a 24% base rate (30 schools).

Small numbers: read these as early signals, not laws. But the pattern is consistent: a card that fails one judgment rarely fails it alone.

The ends of the sample

Not a ranking: the named extremes of a small sample, with links to the full local picture.

Most “Exceptional” judgments

Most judgments below expected

The rollout so far

118

Nov 2025

71

Dec 2025

56

Jan 2026

Report-card inspections by month, from each card’s own inspection date. On Ofsted’s four-year cycle the framework reaches a majority of schools around 2028; the newest month undercounts until its reports publish.

How the shares move

This is the first reading (Feb 2026). Each monthly Ofsted MI release overwrites the published state, so the band-share trend can only be built forward. A snapshot of every release is stored from now on, and this section becomes a time series as they accumulate.

Reuse this chart

The summary chart is free to republish with a link to this page. It re-renders from the latest Ofsted MI release, so an embedded copy stays current:

<a href="https://geo-reality.com/uk/ofsted-report-cards">
  <img src="https://geo-reality.com/uk/ofsted-report-cards/opengraph-image"
       alt="Share of schools below the expected standard by Ofsted report-card judgment"
       width="1200" height="630" style="max-width:100%;height:auto" />
</a>
<p>Chart: GeoReality, from Ofsted Management Information (Feb 2026).</p>

Journalists: the underlying counts per judgment and band are available on request, and the methodology above states the sample’s limits.

Questions this page answers

What replaced the overall Ofsted grade?

For inspections under the new framework, schools receive a report card of separate judgments (achievement, curriculum and teaching, attendance and behaviour, leadership and governance, inclusion, personal development and well-being), each on a five-band scale from Exceptional to Urgent improvement, plus a binary safeguarding check. No overall grade is published, and this page does not invent one: Ofsted's own transition guidance says the new scale has no clean mapping to the old Outstanding-to-Inadequate bands.

How many schools have a new report card so far?

245 of the 21,844 state-funded schools in England (1.1%) have a published report card in Ofsted's Feb 2026 Management Information. The count grows with every monthly release as routine inspections continue.

Which judgment do schools fall short on most often?

Achievement: 23.7% of the 245 schools judged on it fell below the expected standard. The least-failed judgment is personal development and well-being at 3.3%.

How rare is an 'Exceptional' judgment?

Between 1.2% and 3.3% of judged schools receive it, depending on the judgment. The new top band is scarce across the board.

Every English school, on a map

Grades, report-card sub-judgments and pupil counts for all 21,844 state-funded schools, beside pay, rent, house prices and crime for every UK local authority.

Explore UK Regions →