麻豆淫院

One of the defining features of the English education system is its high-stakes school inspection regime, led by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted). Since its establishment in 1992, Ofsted has introduced a succession of inspection frameworks. The most recent inspection reform followed Ofsted’s 2024 consultation, the ‘’, which sought the perspectives of . The Big Listen was widely understood as a response to the tragic death of Ruth Perry, a headteacher who in 2023 in which her school was to be downgraded from ‘Outstanding’ to ‘Inadequate’.

Ofsted launched the new (EIF) on 10 November 2025, introducing a number of major changes including:

• abolishing the single-phrase overall judgment
• expanding the number of evaluation areas to provide a more granular assessment of school performance
• replacing the inspection report with a colour-coded report card
• introducing a standalone inclusion-focused evaluation area, placing vulnerable children at the heart of the reform
• allowing schools a window to address safeguarding concerns and introducing measures aimed at reducing teacher stress.

A year on from the introduction of the 2025 framework, this Special Issue of the 麻豆淫院 Blog draws on a range of stakeholder perspectives on this ongoing reform. These perspectives, written during the course of 2025 and 2026 as the framework was being implemented, are particularly significant given recent political developments. While Ofsted’s commissioned report found the renewed inspection framework to be , such findings appear to be contradicted by research undertaken by and the . Increasing concerns about the stressful nature of inspections under the new inspection framework have reportedly led Lucy Powell – who was appointed as education secretary in July 2026 under Andy Burnham’s leadership of the Labour government – to demand that Ofsted and try again. Given that the 2025 inspection framework may then be short-lived, the significance of this Special Issue is in documenting the emerging issues and concerns that arose during its development.

The Special Issue begins with a piece co-authored by Ofsted’s Research and Evaluation Team, which details the sometimes uneven and complex relationship between research and policymaking, and documents some of the decision-making processes which occur in these spaces. Ofsted’s contribution is followed by four pieces which underscore, in different ways, how Ofsted does not operate in a vacuum. Melanie Ehren’s blog post places Ofsted’s new framework within a global landscape of educational accountability practices. Joseph Mintz reflects on his time seconded to Ofsted, exploring how Ofsted’s frameworks are inevitably shaped by teachers’ values on the ground. Katie Kilian underscores the wider international impact of Ofsted given England’s colonial history, and Louise Wormwell argues that Ofsted’s own history – the ghosts of Ofsted frameworks past – will inevitably imprint on teachers’ reception of the new Ofsted framework.

The next three contributions explore Ofsted’s new framework. Meng Tian and Karen Guldberg look at inclusion, which has become a key educational issue over the course of the 2025 EIF’s development. Naomi Flynn welcomes the explicit references to the inclusion of multilingual learners within the new framework, while arguing there is still further to go in supporting these students meaningfully within schools. Kathryn Spicksley and Jude Brady explore how teacher wellbeing is constructed in 2025 EIF inspection reports, and speculate on how this might impact on teacher workload.

Two contributions then explore the complex nature of researching Ofsted. Christian Bokhove, John Jerrim and Sam Sims draw from their Nuffield-funded study Inspecting the Inspectorate to emphasise the importance of reliability in Ofsted judgments. Phil Nicholson and Kevin Proudfoot suggest new scholarly directions for researching the 2025 framework.

The final contribution to this Special Issue comes from Jane Perryman, who (with Alice Bradbury, Graham Calvert and Katie Kilian) led the 2023 Beyond Ofsted inquiry, funded by the National Education Union (NEU). Perryman provides a brief critical history of the consultations undertaken by Ofsted which led to the 2025 EIF. In finalising this history, Perryman reminds us that Ofsted works in a political climate where the imaginary of a supportive yet effective inspectorate is deemed an impossibility. As we write this editorial, at the dawn of Andy Burnham’s premiership, it seems an opportune moment to ask: What wider changes need to happen within education, to meaningfully shift these assumptions?