The 2025 Ofsted Framework: What Governors Need to Know for Effective Strategic Oversight

Focus: Accountability, Safeguarding, Inclusion and the New Grading Scale

This session is designed to give governors and trustees a clear understanding of how their role is evaluated under the 2025 Ofsted Inspection Framework and what effective strategic oversight now looks like in practice.

The renewed framework removes single-word judgements and introduces a stronger focus on Leadership and Governance as a distinct evaluation area. Governance is positioned as the strategic bookend of inspection, with inspectors examining how well boards understand their school’s context, hold leaders to account, and assure themselves that pupils are safe, included and learning well over time.

The session will explain how inspectors use the five-point grading scale from Urgent Improvement to Exceptional, and how safeguarding is judged separately using a Met / Not Met threshold. Governors will gain clarity on what inspectors expect to see in relation to inclusion, staff wellbeing and oversight of leaders’ decisions, and how the Ofsted Toolkit is used to test the board’s effectiveness.

By the end of the session, governors will be able to:

• Understand how inspectors evaluate Leadership and Governance, and the evidence they use to reach judgements
• Recognise what “Expected” and “Strong” governance looks like in practice, including challenge, support and oversight
• Fulfil their role in monitoring the strengthened Inclusion evaluation area, including SEND, disadvantaged pupils and staff wellbeing
• Ask the right strategic questions of leaders, without drifting into operational detail.

This session is designed to strengthen governors’ confidence in their statutory role and ensure boards are well placed to provide robust, informed oversight aligned to inspection expectations.