Lucy Powell reported to seek changes to England’s new Ofsted school inspections

Lucy Powell, England’s education secretary, is preparing to ask Ofsted to rethink parts of its new school inspection system, the Guardian reported on 2 October. The reported move follows complaints from school leaders about workload and stress under the framework introduced in November 2025. No final changes or start date have been announced.

According to the Guardian, Powell wants inspectors to give more weight to the social and economic circumstances of schools and their pupils, particularly when assessing inclusion. The newspaper said she does not plan to abandon the system of separate ratings. It reported that her intended changes would be communicated to Ofsted in the coming weeks; Ofsted declined to comment to the newspaper.

What Lucy Powell has said about school context

Powell has publicly indicated the direction of her thinking. Speaking at the Labour party conference the previous week, she said she wanted a ‘much stronger emphasis’ on context in the current inspection regime, according to the Guardian. She also cautioned that reform could not happen ‘massively quickly’. Those remarks indicate a concern with how inspections account for schools’ circumstances, but do not set out a revised grading method or timetable.

The Guardian quoted Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, as welcoming signs that ministers were listening to criticism. He said schools serve communities facing different levels of challenge and argued that those in disadvantaged areas, or with more pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, should not be placed at a disadvantage by a framework that fails to reflect those circumstances. His comments address how schools are judged, rather than proposing that they should escape scrutiny.

How the current Ofsted framework grades schools

The five-point grading scale runs from ‘exceptional’ through ‘strong standard’ and ‘expected standard’ to ‘needs attention’ and ‘urgent improvement’. Ofsted says its inspections provide information for parents and carers and identify priorities for improvement. The Guardian’s account suggests Powell wants changes to how inspectors apply the framework to schools in different circumstances, while retaining its separate ratings.

What school staff reported about the new inspections

In a report released on 23 September, the National Education Union said 65% of respondents who had experienced both the new framework and its predecessor felt the new inspection was the same or worse. Among staff recently inspected under the new framework, 85% reported an increased workload in preparation, including 50% who reported a significant increase. These figures describe the experiences of the union’s survey respondents, not all school staff.

The NEU also reported that 86% of recently inspected respondents said the experience had negatively affected their stress levels, while 87% reported a negative impact from exhaustion. Its online survey included 1,970 members in June 2026; 1,508 said they had undergone an inspection under the new framework. The responses show why the union is pressing for changes, but do not independently establish that inspections caused particular health outcomes across the profession.

The union wants immediate changes to grading, including an end to using national average comparisons as the main basis for some judgments. It has also called for a review of inspector training, including how inspectors understand school context and wellbeing. Its longer-term proposals go further, seeking narrative inspection reports in place of the five-point scale. Those are the NEU’s requests, not changes the government has agreed to make.

What remains unconfirmed about the proposed changes

The Guardian reported that Ofsted has commissioned an independent evaluation of the new framework, with an interim report expected later in 2026. The newspaper also described an analysis by former Ofsted inspector Steve Wren that found lower ratings among schools with more pupils receiving free school meals or special educational needs support. As quoted by the Guardian, Wren raised several possible explanations, including differences in performance, bias in the framework or inspectors’ ability to recognise strengths. His analysis does not, on its own, settle which explanation is correct.

The proposed instruction to Ofsted remains a reported plan. The Guardian’s account and Powell’s conference remarks establish the direction she is considering, but the exact changes, their timing and how schools would be assessed under any revised approach are still to be confirmed. Until those details are published, school leaders and parents have the existing framework as the clearest statement of how inspections operate.