Ofsted Tracker, Highlights & Insights
Welcome to SAfE’s latest Ofsted tracker, highlights and insights
This month, along with Ofsted data, and inspection highlights we are asking: How can Senior Leaders approach and use self-evaluation to identify strengths and areas for improvement in their school’s quality of education?
Download Surrey’s May 2025 Inspection Tracker to find your school and access data by phase and cross-phase.
How can Senior Leaders approach and use self-evaluation to identify strengths and areas for improvement in their school’s quality of education?
Successful self-evaluation is a fundamental driver of school improvement. By systematically evaluating teaching and learning provision, school leaders can identify what has the most positive impact on learners, highlight areas that require further development and enhance professional practice. Even within OFSTED’s changing context of external evaluation, school leaders should maintain a strong commitment to self-evaluation; ensuring that continuous reflection visibly impacts their school’s educational practice. Amid the busy demands of a school environment, adopting a strategic, well-planned approach to gathering and analysing evidence is fundamental, ensuring the process remains both manageable and impactful. Within this article, we explore some of the key elements which can support school leaders in evaluating the quality of education within their school, with the aim that these can be used to support evaluation across all areas within the quality of education.
Embedding a Reflective School Culture
Fostering a whole school culture where reflective thinking is not just encouraged but deeply embedded in the school’s approach to evaluating teaching and learning signifies its value, purpose and usability to the teaching team. It also reinforces it as a form of refining professional expertise. At a whole school level, gathering information from these reflective practices can provide valuable insight into teaching quality, curriculum impact and pupil progress. It enables leaders to identify trends, celebrate strengths and address challenges from a position of surety, guiding the identification of their individual school’s educational priorities – ultimately leading to evidence-informed leadership judgements.
Creating Purposeful Opportunities for Reflection
To achieve this, creating purposeful opportunities for teacher reflection – carefully planned and strategically timed across the school year – demonstrates leaders’ commitment to continuous improvement in classroom practice for all pupils. For teachers, these planned opportunities for reflection can support deeper professional growth. Reflection enables teachers to critically assess their lessons, interactions with pupils and strategies within a supportive environment, helping them to make adjustments to meet pupils’ needs more effectively – fuelling their professional growth. Leaders can match planned opportunities for professional development to this evidence and show how they are responsive to evolving educational needs within their school through tackling gaps in provision.
Analysing Curriculum Impact
A crucial element of this area of self-evaluation is analysing the impact of the curriculum. It is essential because it identifies whether teaching translates into meaningful, long-lasting learning for all pupils. Leaders must evaluate whether pupils retain, apply and build upon knowledge over time to determine if the curriculum is achieving its intended outcomes. There are different ways of approaching this, for example the use of Pupil Book Study. This supports not only Senior Leaders but also Subject Leaders and teachers in meaningfully evaluating their school’s curriculum by demonstrating:
Establishing a Strategic Self-Evaluation Cycle
As we have previously explored in OFSTED Insights, implementing a structured self-evaluation cycle, where each step in the process is understood across the school will provide the strategic, well-planned approach we mentioned at the start of this article. The figure below is an example of the core steps a school could use.
Figure 1: Towards context-specific school self-evaluation for school improvement. (Chapman 2008)
By involving staff in identifying next steps, leaders foster whole-school ownership of evaluation, reinforcing a collective responsibility for improving the quality of education. This collaborative approach not only enhances staff engagement but ensures that leadership decisions are aligned with the school’s strategic priorities, maximizing the impact of time and resources. Leaders can also build further strength into self-evaluation by working with other schools – SAfE’s new Linking Local Leaders program is designed to foster strong collaboration between maintained primary schools, promoting equity and access to high quality education through shared experiences. Linking Local Leaders.
Identifying Precise Areas for Improvement
For self-evaluation to drive meaningful change, it is essential to precisely pinpoint and diagnose the underlying issues before moving forward. This detailed understanding of which aspects of teaching and learning need to be addressed will support leaders in ensuring follow-up actions directly impact the identified area for improvement, rather than prematurely moving to a solution. For example, if outcomes indicate a weakness in maths, it is crucial to determine exactly which elements of maths are affected together with a clarity on which groups of pupils and/or which year groups this applies to. Leaders could use the following questions to facilitate this deeper, more reflective analysis:
In summary, when approached systematically, self-evaluation empowers Senior Leaders and their teams to drive meaningful and sustained improvements in their schools. By adopting evidence-based strategies, embedding a reflective culture, and prioritising improved outcomes for all pupils, leaders can continuously enhance the quality of education. A rigorous, well-structured approach to self-evaluation ensures that schools focus on the aspects of teaching and learning that most impact pupil progress, curriculum effectiveness, and professional practice. Self-evaluation remains an indispensable tool for shaping evidence-informed leadership decisions that strengthen the educational experience for all learners.
