Better governor webinar: Hot topics for autumn 2024

This session was facilitated by Steve Barker and Linda Waghorn, from Better Governor, to bring all those involved in school and academy governance up-to-date with what is happening in education that specifically impacts on those in governance and their role in Autumn 2024.

This webinar offered commentary on Ofsted processes. After the recording, Steve and Linda from Better Governor wanted to share some reflections:

Clarification of Ofsted Processes

Please accept our apologies for any confusion that we may have caused during this webinar. We hope it is helpful to offer the following clarification:

• Our Hot Topic relating to Ofsted, aimed to convey the changes this term to Ungraded inspections, formerly Section 8 inspections.
• We were also sharing, on slide #22, the DfE announcement (2nd September) about scrapping Overall Grades for School inspections and our comments about the full changes not coming into force until probably September 2025 related to the issue of a new Ofsted Inspection framework.
• We may have confused some of you with responses to questions, which we now appreciate referred to the new inspection handbooks and inspections that recommenced this week. Whilst the words ‘Outstanding’ and ‘Good’ will no longer be used, with immediate effect, in relation to an overall grade, they WILL be used for individual judgements on ‘Quality of Education’ etc. To further confuse the situation, an overall judgement of ‘Requires Improvement’ will not be made, BUT a school which has one of more individual judgements of Requires Improvement, “may be subject to monitoring by Ofsted”.
• Schools will, where appropriate, continue to be judged ‘overall’ as having ‘Serious Weaknesses’ or as requiring ‘Special Measures’, which is why we asserted that all the judgments have not changed or gone away.
• The session did not aim to go into the handbook at all, as that is a full session in itself. However, on reflection, we do believe we left some of you confused and we apologise unreservedly for that.