Home › Guides › The new Ofsted report card scale
The new Ofsted report card scale, explained
Each area of a school's report card is now graded on a five-point scale: Exceptional, Strong standard, Expected standard, Needs attention and Urgent improvement. Expected standard is the intended baseline, the level a solid school is expected to reach, so it is where most schools are likely to sit across many areas. Strong standard and Exceptional sit above it; Needs attention and Urgent improvement sit below it and flag work that has to improve. Safeguarding is not on this scale at all: it is judged separately as either met or not met.
The old shorthand of one word for a whole school has gone. In its place each part of a school is rated on its own, using the same five labels. If you have only ever seen Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement and Inadequate, the new words can look unfamiliar, so here is what each one means in plain English and how it lines up with what came before.
The five grades, in plain English
The scale is designed to sit around a clear middle point. Expected standard is that middle: the benchmark a well-run school is expected to meet. From there the scale reaches up to genuinely rare, top-tier practice and down to work that needs prompt attention. Here is each grade, from highest to lowest.
| Grade | What it means for that area |
|---|---|
| Exceptional | The top grade, meant to be rare. The area is a clear model of best practice that goes well beyond the expected standard. Few schools are expected to reach it in any given area. |
| Strong standard | Clearly above the baseline. The area is a real strength, doing more than is expected, without quite reaching the exceptional bar. |
| Expected standard | The intended baseline. The area meets the benchmark Ofsted expects of a school. This is not a warning; it is broadly where a solid, effective school lands, and where most schools are likely to sit. |
| Needs attention | Below the baseline. The area has shortcomings the school needs to address, though they are not as serious as the grade below. |
| Urgent improvement | The lowest grade. The area has serious weaknesses that require prompt action and follow-up. |
Takeaway: Expected standard is the baseline most schools sit at, not a poor result. Read Strong standard and Exceptional as genuine strengths above that line, and Needs attention and Urgent improvement as areas being worked on below it.
Why Expected standard is not a bad grade
This is the point parents most often misread. On the old scale, Good was the second grade of four and Outstanding sat above it, so plenty of families treated Good as merely acceptable. On the new scale, Expected standard is deliberately set as the level a school is expected to meet, so an area rated Expected standard is meeting the benchmark, full stop. It is the intended baseline for the system, which is why a great many areas across a great many schools are likely to land there. Reserve your concern for Needs attention and Urgent improvement, and read Strong standard or Exceptional as a school going beyond what is expected in that area.
How the new grades compare with the old ones
There is no exact one-to-one swap between the two scales, and it would be wrong to imply one, because the frameworks judge in different ways. But it helps to see roughly where the old single grades and the new area grades sit relative to each other.
| Old single grade (until Sept 2024) | Roughly where it sits on the new scale |
|---|---|
| Outstanding | Around the top of the new scale, but Exceptional is deliberately rarer than Outstanding was, so many former Outstanding features now read as Strong standard |
| Good | Broadly the Expected standard to Strong standard region: meeting or exceeding the baseline |
| Requires improvement | Around Needs attention: below the baseline, with shortcomings to fix |
| Inadequate | Around Urgent improvement: serious weaknesses needing prompt action |
Treat that table as a rough map, not a conversion chart. The big structural difference is that the old grade described the whole school in one word, while the new grade applies to one area at a time, so a single school will often show several different grades across its report card at once.
Safeguarding is judged separately
Safeguarding, how well a school keeps children safe, does not sit on the five-point scale. It is judged separately as either met or not met. That separation matters: a school can be strong across its graded areas and still fail on safeguarding, and if safeguarding is not met that is a serious finding in its own right, whatever the other grades say. When you read a report card, check the safeguarding outcome as a distinct item rather than assuming it is folded into the general picture.
What this means when you compare schools
Because every area now carries its own grade, comparing two schools is no longer a matter of lining up single words. You are weighing several grades at once, plus the separate safeguarding outcome, and often against a neighbouring school that still shows an older single grade until it is re-inspected. Our report is built for exactly this, showing every school near a postcode with its latest rating and the year behind it, so you can compare fairly across the change. To go deeper, read how to weigh a school's report card areas for your child, get the background in Ofsted report cards explained and the 2024 grade changes, and see what the old Ofsted ratings mean. You can also assess a school area by area with our tool, and see the wider picture in our analysis of the grade transition.
We report what Ofsted has published for each school, with the date, so you always know whether you are looking at a new report card or an older single grade. For the definitive framework and current scale, read Ofsted's own guidance on gov.uk.