Preparing for Ofsted’s New School Inspection Framework

A sharper focus on teaching and learning:

Tom Cragg

Head of Client Success, MFL Consultant and Examiner, School Governor, former Head Teacher

When inspectors arrive this November, will your school be able to clearly evidence the quality of teaching and learning across every subject and phase?

Ofsted’s new education inspection framework 2025, coming into effect in November 2025, is changing in a number of ways. One of the biggest shifts is a sharper focus on the quality of teaching and learning — an area that leaders will now need to evidence from different angles.

From November, inspectors will be guided by the School Inspection Toolkit. Within this, the Developing Teaching section outlines how well leaders understand, support, and improve teaching across the school.

What questions might Ofsted ask about teaching and learning?

Based on the draft toolkit, leaders could be asked:

Do you have an accurate understanding of the quality of teaching across subjects, phases, and year groups?

Have you set focused actions, with clear milestones, that drive continuous improvements?

Do leaders have an informed view of the quality of teaching for pupils with SEND?

Are teachers expert at translating curriculum content into explanations and learning activities?

Are teachers skilled at checking pupils’ understanding and adapting their teaching in the moment?

Do appropriate, well-judged adaptations help pupils overcome the most significant barriers to learning?

These are not just “tick-box” questions. Inspectors will expect schools to demonstrate a clear, evidence-based understanding of teaching quality.

Ofsted learning walks and lesson visits

The School Inspection Operating Guide makes clear how evidence will be gathered during inspections. Schools can expect:

Learning walks chosen from a range of foci such as inclusion, curriculum, behaviour and achievement.

Time for leaders to explain the rationale behind strengths and areas for improvement.

Leaders accompanying inspectors on walks, discussing evidence in real time.

Visits to a broad sample of lessons to test the impact of leaders’ strategies.

Reviews of pupils’ work to triangulate findings.

This means inspections will involve a much more granular look at classroom practice, testing whether leaders’ strategies translate into real impact.

The challenge for schools

Many schools already have teaching and learning strategies in place. The challenge is whether those approaches will provide answers to questions posed by the new inspection framework. Common difficulties include:

Reliance on fragmented notes or inconsistent feedback from learning walks.

Difficulty tracking teaching quality systematically across subjects, year groups or phases.

Limited evidence of impact for SEND provision within quality-first teaching.

A lack of measurable milestones for improvement actions.

Without addressing these, convincing responses to inspectors’ questions may prove challenging.

Preparing for inspection

Schools can build confidence in preparation for the new framework by:

taking a systematic approach to lesson feedback, ensuring teaching quality is consistently reviewed (learn more here).

setting measurable improvement actions that can be tracked over time.

embedding SEND within the whole-school teaching strategy, not as a separate strand (see how Boston West Academy approached this).

equipping teachers to be adaptive in the classroom and demonstrate impact (read more on adaptive teaching here).

This doesn’t require wholesale change — but it does demand clarity, consistency and a strong evidence base.

Preparing your school for Ofsted’s new framework

If you’re already asking yourself, “How would we evidence our teaching and learning to Ofsted?”, you’re not alone. Many school leaders are beginning to prepare now so their strengths are clear and their evidence is ready.

One of the best starting points is to reflect on the role of feedback in your school. Inspectors will expect to see not only how you gather feedback on teaching, but also how that feedback translates into improvement and impact.

Download our free eBook: Lesson Feedback: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to explore real stories from CEOs, trust leaders, and headteachers about what makes feedback effective — and how to avoid the pitfalls that undermine progress.

This will give your team a practical foundation for answering Ofsted’s new questions with confidence.