This year’s annual Ofsted report, written by His Majesty’s Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, focuses on the themes of ‘inclusion, disadvantage and vulnerability’.
Sir Oliver explains that:
“We must all seek to mitigate the pernicious impact that disadvantage and vulnerability have on young lives.
“We are determined to play our part. We hope that our changes to education inspections will contribute to a system-wide behaviour shift on inclusion. We want to encourage the providers of education and social care to identify support needs early, intervene early, and deploy evidence-led interventions to support our most vulnerable children.”
Inclusion, disadvantage and vulnerability
The report shares that Ofsted feels that the education system works well for most children but that for others there are many obstacles and barriers. It notes the attainment gap of months between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.
Additionally, the report states that, “Disadvantaged pupils are more than three times more likely to be severely absent from school (missing at least half of their schooling) and are five times more likely to be permanently excluded.”
The report authors highlight a few groups they feel are most impacted:
- Children who are ‘economically disadvantaged’
Ofsted notes that these children have barriers to access, opportunity and attainment. Sir Oliver remarks that support such as access to good early years provision and improvement to careers education and guidance could be beneficial to pupils. He explains that with the latter that:
“When good-quality guidance is lacking, this can particularly affect learners from economically disadvantaged groups – where there are more limited opportunities for work experience in some communities and where learners aren’t always able to see clear future career paths for themselves.”
- Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND)
Ofsted states that while it’s “hard to disagree” that the SEND system is “broken” they feel this term doesn’t “do justice to the professionals who are trying their best to support some of the country’s most vulnerable children. Nor does it give confidence to the parents and carers who are navigating – and often ‘fighting’ – the system for the best possible support for their child.”
However, it does note that positive experiences and outcomes are only the “norm” in four areas across the country; 16 areas had inconsistent experiences and outcomes, and nine areas have systemic failings. Ofsted notes that it wants to look at wider issues that children with SEND are disproportionately affected by, such as poor attendance and not being in school full time.
- Growing up in care
Ofsted explains that educational outcomes continue to remain far poorer for children in care than their peers. In fact, half of children known to social services reach the expected standard for reading, writing and maths by the end of primary school compared with their peers. This gap continues to grow at secondary school, putting them at least one grade lower than their peers in each subject.
Sir Oliver also talked about stark regional differences in the quality of services provided by local authorities (LAs) for these children. For example, 88% of LAs in London were good or outstanding, compared with 46% in the North West. Additionally, there is a regional difference in the number of available children’s homes.
Key work highlighted
The report highlights work Ofsted has done or is doing in specific areas such as:
Inclusion
- Commissioned National Children’s Bureau to carry out independent research to better understand why learners might be considered vulnerable and how they are identified.
- Included inclusion as an evaluation area in the renewed inspection framework and featured inclusion within all other evaluation areas.
- Focusing particularly on children who are socio-economically disadvantaged, have SEND or are known/have been known to children’s social care in their inspections, as well other children who ‘typically face greater barriers’.
- Collaborating with school leaders to understand their context and the various factors that may prevent learners in their setting from making progress.
The earliest years
- Undertaking various pieces of research into early years, its significance and good practice.
- Focusing on high-quality interactions in early years provision.
- Encouraging leaders to identify gaps in practitioner knowledge and provide bespoke training opportunities.
- Investigating some of the most distressing incidents and working closely with the DfE to ensure safe feeding practices in the EYFS statutory framework, safer sleep practices in the early years inspection workforce, and ensuring EFYS requirements are reflected in the welfare and wellbeing evaluation area of inspections.
- Continued work with DfE to encourage a stronger focus on babies.
Children who do not attend school on a full-time basis or are missing education
- Raising concerns on the number of children who do not attend school and the impact this will have on these children.
- Thematic visits with CQC as part of SEND inspections – exploring the theme of children who are not in school (will be publishing report n findings).
Children and young people facing specific challenges
- Introduced revised framework for ‘area SEND inspections’
- Collaborative work with local area partners
- ITE thematic monitoring visits
- Speaking with children, young people, professionals and carers to understand how mainstream schools and FE providers are supporting academic and personal progress of looked-after children
- Report on careers education
- Continued work to revise and reform the children’s social care framework
- Considering how their data can support the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill
- Registering and working with supported accommodation providers and inspections of some of these
- Registering secure 16 to 19 academies as a new type of provision
- Providing education expertise to prisons and YOIs
- Investigation of unregistered children’s homes and actions for these.
Challenges of particular concern
- Updates to SCCIF to focus more on supporting children with complex needs.
- Training for social care regulatory workforce to promote inclusive approach for children most at risk of instability.
- Joint targeted area inspections (JTAIs) into the multi-agency response to serious youth violence.
- Focus on safeguarding research and gathering evidence relating to factors that contribute most strongly to safeguarding.
- Research into child homelessness and plan to look more in depth at their experiences and how they can support and advocate for them.
- Call for more tailored support for care leavers.
Inspection reforms
The report also highlights the inspection reforms that came into effect in November 2025.
This is where inspections moved from a single-word judgement to report cards that grade schools on four key aspects of school life (quality of education, behaviour and attendance, personal development, leadership and management) and separately evaluating if safeguarding duties have been met.
Speaking on these reforms, Sir Oliver said he believes that these will:
- Raise standards for all learners
- Put disadvantaged and vulnerable learners ‘at the heart of everything we do’
- Greatly improve the information (and level of detail) provides to parents, carers and policy makers
- Make the inspection process ‘fairer and more helpful’ to education professionals
- Provide a more balanced picture of strengths and areas for improvement
- Avoid a potentially overly simplistic and reductive judgment.
Inspection and regulatory activity
This academic year, Ofsted carried out 38,000 inspections and visits:
- 12,300 inspections of early years and childcare providers
- 4,920 inspections/visits to children’s social care providers
- 5,900 inspections of state-funded schools
- 1,030 inspections of independent schools
- 640 inspections of FE and skills providers
- 36 inspections of prisons and YOIs
- 29 inspections of local area SEND partnerships.
In state-funded schools, the percentage that were good or outstanding in each area of the report cards were as follows: quality of education – 83%, behaviour and attitudes – 94%, personal development – 96%, and leadership and management – 88%.
For other types of providers, the percentage that had an overall effectiveness of good or outstanding were as follows: 87% of social care providers, 68% of LA services, 79% of non-association independent schools, 31% of prisons and YOIs, 86% of FE and skills providers, 100% of ECF/NPQ lead providers, 98% of early years an childcare providers.
Additionally, four of the 29 SEND partnerships inspected ‘typically led to positive experiences and outcomes for children with SEND.’
Priorities for change
The report lists three key areas for improvement:
- Profit or profiteering
- If a service is run for profit, it must be with the needs of the children above all else
- Starting point must be to reduce number of children requiring a place in a children’s home.
- Need to boost number of foster carers and use child’s extended family network.
- Incentivise homes that can support children with most complex needs.
- Must work with local authorities to drive out use of all unregistered children’s homes.
- Attendance and behaviour
- Note that ‘attendance and behaviour are the foundation on which everything else rests’.
- Use of report cards place attendance and behaviour together as ‘two sides of a coin’.
- Want to discover more about the root of disruptive behaviour.
- Notes permanent exclusions in 2023-2024 were highest on record but feel ‘Headteachers must have these sanctions available to them, and their use isn’t at odds with inclusiveness.’
- Want to encourage schools to support students in navigating online lives but provide sanctuary in school away from devices.
- Want to create a better balance between evaluating policy/process and better understanding the reality on the ground.
- Need to discover what works best for schools and share insights more widely.
- Want to use ‘exceptional’ grade to find and share this best practice.
- Building form a position of strength
- Notes transformative work happening in early years, schools, social care and FE.
- Highlights education and social care as forward-looking.
- Explains clear determination to tackle inequalities.
- Notes opportunities and risk of AI.
- Duty to improve lives and life chances of every learner.
“As a country, we should measure our successes in education, children’s services and skills, both by how well we support the most economically disadvantaged and vulnerable, and by how much further we can push forward the boundaries of knowledge through higher learning.” – Sir Martyn Oliver
To learn more, read the full report.