After Ofsted inspection this year, Josephine Smith’s school was judged ‘outstanding’ in all categories. Across five articles and five categories, she sets out the steps her team took to achieve this. We begin with Quality of Education
Quality of Education: This Ofsted judgement category covers the intent, implementation and impact of a school’s curriculum as detailed in the Education Inspection Framework - Adobe Stock

Overall Ofsted judgements are a thing of the past and – for this academic year at least – schools face judgements in each of four or five categories.

As you will no doubt have read, the framework will be changing in September. While we have had a glimpse of the Ofsted Report Card proposals (Ofsted, 2025), the reality is that many schools will still be inspected this year under the current framework.

As such, in this series of short articles, I would like to detail the steps that we have taken to move our school from “overall good” to “outstanding” in all five categories (including Sixth Form Provision) after our inspection in November.

Of course, much of what we know already about how schools are judged will also be relevant under the new framework, even if the terminology and the categories may change.

Acing your Ofsted: Five categories, five articles

    1. Quality of Education: Published February 26
    2. Behaviour and Attitudes: Published March 4
    3. Personal Development: Published March 11
    4. Leadership and Management: Published March 18
    5. Sixth Form Provision: Published March 24

Quality of Education

The Quality of Education judgement covers the intent, implementation and impact of a school’s curriculum as detailed in the updated Education Inspection Framework (see Ofsted, 2023).

We had a gap of seven years between an ungraded inspection that deemed us still “good” and our recent graded inspection. This offered plenty of time to consider areas for improvement identified by the last inspection as well as to implement a whole new landscape of educational research and practice. In 2020, we began considering our curriculum in the light of the Ofsted curriculum review work which fed into the current framework.

The senior leadership team studied the research and set a vision. If I had to highlight the key action that set us on the path to our outstanding for the Quality of Education judgement this would be it. The subsequent work we did with subject leaders, led to a genuine, measurable impact for students. Here’s how….

 

An aligned autonomy approach

We very deliberately took an approach with subject leaders that we might call “aligned autonomy”.

We ensure that our subject leaders have the tools, training and time they need to consider best practice in their subjects and, importantly, we give them enough freedom and creative space to implement it.

We know that teaching and learning looks different in different subjects. At the same time we want teachers and subject leaders to discuss best practice together, in a very forensic way.

We were clear therefore about what subject leaders could decide and what we expected to be the same across the school.

Ultimately that has resulted in six common documents in each subject area. It is not the documents themselves that are important, but the thinking that shapes them and the shared understanding of implementation that is key.

All documents are in the same format but are authored and owned by subject leaders. The six aligned documents are:

  1. Learning Pathway: Like this one for geography. Click here.
  2. Knowledge Sequencers: For each key stage – different from knowledge organisers. Again, an example from our geography team can be found here.
  3. Pillars of Pedagogy: A document detailing key delivery techniques in the subject. This focuses on the “how” rather than “what” is taught.
  4. Subject Assessment Protocol: Dovetailing with our whole school assessment and feedback policy, this details the “why”, “how” and “when” of assessment in the subject. It provides clarity of expectation for teachers and helps monitor potentially excessive marking workload.
  5. Quality Assurance Workbook: A live document that gets completed during the year by subject leaders.
  6. Common scheme of learning (SOL) template: Used for each unit, the template requires subjects to detail the knowledge to be taught, key prior knowledge needed to access the learning, links to future units, assessment points, PSHE and careers links, and key subject vocabulary. We insist on this format so that the SOL became easily understood by all, including those teaching outside their subject specialism and early careers teachers.

 

A shared language for curriculum planning

We developed a shared language to discuss curriculum planning and delivery, made sure all understood it, and used it regularly.

We wanted to create a culture where our staff could talk about teaching in both an academic and applied way, using shared terminology and references.

The early career and recently qualified teacher and NPQ materials have been invaluable to us as well as our use of the Teaching Walkthrus (Sherrington & Caviglioli, 2020) to generate discussion and share research in a time-efficient and accessible way.

A good example is our joint use of the phrase “twin test”. We encourage departments to consider whether if a pair of twins were to have different teachers in the same subject how would we ensure that both get the best possible learning opportunities and experience?

That doesn’t mean our teachers do exactly the same things at the same time, quashing any agency or professional judgement; it does mean that leaders can be assured of the consistency of opportunity for all learners. Aligned autonomy at subject level.

 

We staged our implementation journey carefully

Getting to outstanding, in hindsight, took us four years. In that time, we saw outcomes improve year-on-year and we saw teachers’ pedagogy develop. At each subject leaders’ meeting we shared the stages of our Quality of Education journey reminding ourselves where we had come from, where we were at and where we were heading. We adapted the pace of our journey to suit.

 

We focused on impact…

…discussing what that means and how to demonstrate it. We spend more and more time now talking about intended impact and how we can ensure it. Instinctively we talk about student outcomes but together we now look at a whole range of quantitative and qualitative data (our QA workbook guides this).

A lead inspector will look at your inspection data summary report (see Ofsted, 2019) as part of their pre-inspection planning. Along with any school website content this is the main source of information that will influence their early impression of the effectiveness or quality of education in your school.

It is not the only measure of impact – it is however your best starting point. Strong outcomes and a strong Quality of Education judgement are certainly linked.

 

In summary: What should you focus on?

  • Building your subject leaders’ confidence in articulating why their subject curriculum is designed as it is, how the sequence is proving impactful, how the curriculum is ambitious for your students (including those with SEND), and what inspectors can expect to see in classrooms.
  • Having whole-school policies that translate to meaningful, proportionate and relevant protocols in subject areas (i.e. how a whole school policy is enacted in a subject-relevant and appropriate way).
  • Consistency of delivery in classrooms (which still gives agency to teachers and their students).

 

  • Josephine Smith is headteacher of Kesteven and Sleaford High School, a secondary school in Lincolnshire which is part of the Robert Carre Trust. Find her previous contributions to SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/josephine-smith 

 

Further information & resources