Ofsted has recently changed the way it inspects schools. A new framework and School Inspection Toolkit came into use from November 2025, and schools are now inspected under this new approach. It’s designed to give parents a clearer, fuller picture of how well a school is supporting its pupils.
The biggest change for parents to know about is that schools no longer receive a single overall grade, such as “Good” or “Outstanding”. Instead, schools now receive a report card, which looks at six separate areas and gives each one its own rating on a five-point scale, from “exceptional” through to “urgent improvement”. The six areas are:
Safeguarding is looked at separately from these six areas, and is simply recorded as either “met” or “not met” – reflecting just how important it is that every child is kept safe.
Importantly, the new toolkit does not ask schools to create extra paperwork just for inspections. Inspectors only look at the documents and records that schools already use in everyday practice, so that inspections stay focused on children rather than paperwork.
Overall, these changes are designed to make inspections clearer, fairer, and more focused on making sure every child receives a safe, supportive and high-quality education.
Norman Street Primary School was inspected in April 2024, under the previous Ofsted framework (introduced in 2019), which is a little different from the new system described above. Under that framework, schools were judged against five headings:
You can read the full report by clicking the link below.
We’re proud that Norman Street Primary School was judged to be a ‘Good’ school at our last inspection.
Norman Street Primary School was last inspected in April 2024, under the previous Ofsted framework described above. When we are next inspected, it will be under the new framework and report card system, which you can read about above. We’ll always share the outcome of any future inspection with our school community as soon as we’re able to.
Inspectors found that “pupils and their families are proud to be part of the positive learning community” at Norman Street. Some of the other things they highlighted include:
You can read the report in full using the link above for all of the detail behind these findings.
