More than a dozen top-performing secondary schools in Greater Manchester are among more than 500 nationwide who were stripped of their “Outstanding” rating overnight – after Ofsted introduced a new grading system.
The practice of issuing an overall one or two-word grade – either Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Inadequate has been scrapped with immediate effect. Ofsted will continue to inspect schools, but will now only issue gradings related to individual aspects of a school’s performance.
During its latest round of inspections, carried out between September 1, 2023, and July 31 this year, Ofsted inspected 655 secondary schools. Of those, 137 schools – about one in five, or 21 percent – were told they had achieved the highest possible rating of “Outstanding”.
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But including schools last inspected before the last school year, there were 495 Outstanding schools in England, as of July 31. That means 15 percent of English schools were rated Outstanding before the changes.
The includes 16 Greater Manchester. Five were in Manchester – Didsbury High School, Burnage Academy for Boys, Levenshulme High School, Co-op Academy Belle Vue and Wright Robinson College in Gorton. There were also four in Trafford, two in Tameside, two in Stockport, and one each in Wigan and Bolton.
You can see the schools near you that were rated Outstanding at their last inspection using our interactive map
There were big differences across the country. In London, one in four schools were rated Outstanding at their last inspection (27pc), the highest proportion of any English region. That was followed by the South East (17pc), East of England (16pc), and Yorkshire and the Humber (16pc).
The North West had the lowest proportion of Outstanding schools, with eight percent. Outside London, Sough (47%) and York (44pc) had the highest proportion of Outstanding schools.
All those Outstanding gradings have now been scrapped. For future inspections this academic year, parents will see grades across the existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.
Ofsted will continue to inspect schools against the same standards, but will now only issue gradings related to individual aspects of a school’s performance.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “The need for Ofsted reform to drive high and rising standards for all our children in every school is overwhelmingly clear. The removal of headline grades is a generational reform and a landmark moment for children, parents and teachers.
“Single-headline grades are low information for parents and high stakes for schools. Parents deserve a much clearer, much broader picture of how schools are performing – that’s what our report cards will provide.
“This Government will make inspection a more powerful, more transparent tool for driving school improvement. We promised change and now we are delivering.”
The changes come after several years of debate within education about whether one overall grade can sum up the complexity of a school.
That debate intensified after an inquest in 2023 found an inspection contributed to the death of head teacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life after learning her school was set to be graded Inadequate.
The Department for Education said the old system did not give a fair assessment of schools and was only supported “by a minority of parents and teachers”.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said: “We have been clear that simplistic one-word judgments are harmful and we are pleased the Government has taken swift action to remove them.
“We are equally pleased that the Government intends to place a stronger emphasis on supporting schools to improve where they need help, rather than defaulting to heavy-handed intervention or knee-jerk changes of governance structures.”