Going, Going, Gone: Correlating improvement needs and overall grades in 2023-24

Overall grades from inspections are on their way out in 2024-25 and, by 2025-26 we will see more changes as the much-heralded ‘report card’ system takes effect (possibly seeing the end of the four-tier grading system, but who knows with any certainty). As we step forward into this new and slightly uncertain future around inspection outcomes, I thought it would be of interest to school leaders to have another delve into the weeds of SSAT’s inspection tracker.

This time, before they reach the dustbin of history, this post focuses on the correlation between the overall grades received by schools in 2023-24 and their ‘need to improve’ comments. I will be identifying which improvement areas are most strongly associated with certain outcomes and what that might mean for school leaders thinking about their next inspection.

Before we do so, a reminder that our inspection tracker captures data from every school and college inspection from every phase and has done since the first inspections of September 2023. The proportions presented are by needs comments (the bullet points towards the end of inspection reports). So far, we have nearly 13,000 lines of data from which to draw inferences about themes, trends and microtrends in the focus of inspections in England.

If you want to know more about our inspection tracker, see these previous posts on attendance, the ‘Oliver effect’, the Big Listen findings, and regional variations. Alternatively, join us for a ‘Readiness for Inspection: Lessons from 2023-24’ webinar on Thursday 10^th October.

The Education Inspection Framework

Each of the ‘need to improve’ areas in reports of inspections in 2023-24 fall under one of the four areas of the inspection framework. With that in mind, how do these aggregated need areas relate to the overall outcome received by a school. This table explains:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, schools that receive ‘need to improve’ comments that mostly or entirely focus upon the quality of education were more likely to be graded overall as good or outstanding (80%). That figure dropped to 57% for schools where the inspection team’s focus was largely or entirely upon leadership and management, with 12% (or almost 1 in 8) of such needs being linked to an inadequate judgment. In the next section, we will outline which specific comments about leadership and management are most likely to trigger the lower overall gradings.

One point of interest from this data table above is that whilst needs comments about behaviour and attitudes are slightly more likely to be correlated with an overall outcome below good than those for personal development, PD comments are slightly more highly correlated with an inadequate overall judgment. We will explore the reasons for this later in the post.

Leadership and Management

Because we arguably learn more from failure than from success, let’s have a look at the needs within the leadership and management domain that had the strongest correlation with negative overall outcome judgments last academic year. This table (and others later in this post) picks out the ‘top 3’ (or perhaps ‘bottom 3’) such needs.

Although statutory safeguarding concerns are predictably at the top of this list, it is notable that these did not trigger an automatic inadequate grading: 1 in 3 such comments on reports were linked to schools that received requires improvement or even good overall grades. This may offer reassurance to school leaders given press reports in recent times, although they will know themselves that this is not an area of the school’s work worth risking: evidence bears this out.

The other biggest threat to schools concerned about a negative judgment and slipping onto one of the ‘serious weaknesses’ or ‘special measures’ lists, are around the effectiveness of previous improvement plans and the assiduousness of governance in holding leaders to account. The first of these was most strongly correlated with the inadequate judgment (remembering that these will remain for each of the EIF domains for at least one more year), whilst the second was more often correlated with a requires improvement overall outcome.

Taken together and alongside monitoring and evaluation processes being fit for purpose (40% of which were linked to negative judgments), there was in the 23/24 academic year a real emphasis on how schools coordinate the work of leaders to drive school improvement whilst keeping children safe. External evaluation of these leadership and governance processes to helps schools avoid becoming echo chambers of groupthink would appear to be a pressing need.

There are some needs comments for leadership and management that have a strong correlation with good or outstanding judgements: areas where it is more forgivable to be found wanting. The strongest of these was where recent changes were not fully embedded, which linked to good or better outcomes in 79% of cases: an implication might be that it is never too late to change course. Stakeholder concerns, which so often give school leaders sleepless nights about their possible negative impact were actually positively correlated with good or better overall judgments (74%), as were concerns about the efficacy of subject leadership.

Behaviour and Attitudes

Before discussing the table below, it should be noted that attendance has, in 2023-24, been the most cited aspect of the behaviour and attitudes area of the inspection framework in ‘need to improve’ comments. Attendance concerns were raised in 54% of these comments, compared to 46% for behaviour. Despite being the junior partner in terms of the frequency of comments, behaviour concerns were most correlated with lower overall grades for schools and colleges.

It should, however, also be stressed that comments about pupils misbehaving have a quite strong correlation with good or better outcomes (65%) as do issues with pupils’ attitudes to learning in lessons (68%). This would indicate that inspection teams did not appear to be seeking perfect pupil behaviour. Instead, the table above seems to show that they were looking closely at how leaders and staff respond to misbehaviour.

If this list can offer anything to school leaders, it is that there are three dimensions to addressing poor behaviour that, if not attended to, pose greater risk during inspections. The first is ensuring that high level concerns (bullying and racism, for example) are felt to have been dealt with by pupils. The second is that the school approach to sanctions (particularly regarding suspensions and exclusions) is being evaluated for impact on future behaviour and adapted where this is not happening. These two areas have a strong correlation with the inadequate judgments.

A third area, the consistency in which staff respond to behaviour, is more finely poised (almost literally 50/50 for good or not good outcomes), but has the strongest correlation with a requires improvement judgment in this aspect of the framework. I suspect most leaders would not be content with flipping a coin in this area, and so ongoing work on collective understanding and engagement with whole school approaches would be a good bet for avoiding this comment.

I briefly mentioned the prevalence of attendance in need to improve comments. It is worth noting that a high proportion of such comments are made about schools that had outstanding or good overall outcomes. Schools received good or better outcomes 76% of the times when attendance was mentioned generally, and 85% of the time when the attendance of ‘vulnerable’ pupils was mentioned specifically. This indicates the inspectorate appreciate the challenges that schools and colleges are facing in this aspect of their work despite identifying the need.

Personal Development

I have mentioned before that personal development is the Cinderella area of the inspection framework, accounting for only 5% of all ‘need to improve’ comments across 2023-24. As shown earlier, though, this aspect has had a strong correlation with overall judgments of inadequate and so could contribute in 2024-25 to schools being identified as having serious weakness or put into special measures. Here’s how the ‘top 3’ concerns for PD looked last year.

Again, perhaps no surprise at the head of the list, with failure to meet statutory expectations correlating powerfully with inadequate judgments (only statutory safeguarding concerns outrank this across all the needs comments). There is a sense perhaps that the bedding-in period for changes to the statutory guidance now being over, which school leaders should heed.

The second item on this list perhaps needs some explanation in relation to more positive needs comments for personal development provision. Comments that pupil knowledge of other faiths and cultures was an issue was correlated with good or better outcomes 86% of the time. For pupil understanding of fundamental British values, this figure was 78%. For schools needing to improve their extra-curricular offer, it was 85%. The data suggests that issues with individual strands of the personal development offer are not a significant barrier to overall effectiveness. But problems with multiple facets of personal development are a significant barrier.

For school leaders looking to shape their personal development offer to minimise risk, paying close attention to ensuring pupils are knowledgeable about equality, diversity and inclusion is one way of avoiding another of those coin-flip moments for a team of inspectors visiting your school or college. The Equalities Duties remain a powerful force for ensuring effectiveness.

Quality of Education

As mentioned at the outset, schools where the focus of ‘need to improve’ comments is largely or entirely on the quality of education were highly likely to achieve good or outstanding overall judgments in 2023-24. Some of these correlations are strikingly positive, particularly ones that point to quite sophisticated or nuanced recommendation from the inspectorate.

Examples of this include a focus on oracy and reasoning (96% correlation with good or better), on refining subject content and sequencing (92%), on the presentation of pupils’ work (89%), and on the teaching of writing skills (88%). But the final table of this post demonstrates that there are basics around the quality of education that it is important for schools to get right.

The first and third of these are illustrative of the fact that there has been a sustained focus on the curriculum for many years now. A curriculum that isn’t broad and balanced – in line with or better than the National Curriculum – is the biggest risk in this area, particularly for an RI grading. Whilst some elements of the curriculum being incomplete or unambitious can often be forgiven (for now?), in 30% of cases this is not the conclusion drawn by inspection teams.

Similarly, there has been a focus on curriculum accessibility for all students, including those with SEND, for many years. If the Big Listen outcomes follow through as intended, support for all vulnerable pupils (including the disadvantaged) in accessing the curriculum will become more, not less, of a focus. Related to this, perhaps, phonics and reading development – with a 26% correlation with less than good overall judgments – was close to appearing on this list.

Two other areas that almost made this list may be of interest to school leaders. The quality of the early years curriculum had a 28% correlation with negative outcomes overall, as did a lack of sufficiency in staff knowledge and understanding of the curriculum they are delivering.

Conclusions

SSAT’s inspection tracker is an incredibly rich data source that cuts through the rhetoric of inspection to get to the reality of what has and hasn’t tipped the scales for schools and colleges in one direction or another. The main conclusion I draw from the data in this post is that good or better schools are in large part reflective of how far leaders and managers disappear in the process of serving their school community, especially the pupils. The flipside of this is that risk of poor outcomes lies where school leadership appears more in inspection reports.

School leaders – including those with governance responsibilities – become more visible (and therefore more likely to trigger the serious weakness or special measures concerns that remain in place post-Big Listen) where they appear not to have got some or more of these basics right: following statutory guidance, converting plans into improvements, addressing (not eradicating) misbehaviour, heeding personal development as a bona fide area of the curriculum and ensuring that that curriculum is wide, fully planned and accessible to all.

There are many positive correlations between need to improve comments and the inspection overall judgments in 2023-24. What I think holds all these together is that they indicate the way in which less visible school leadership empowers school staff to focus on priorities that go beyond the basics. Enhancing stakeholder engagement, re-addressing absence in new ways, improving a facet of personal development provision, and sharpening curriculum materials are examples of things that schools, supported by less visible leaders, can and should really be focusing on because the basics are already in place.

Leaders and governors knowing where their school or college is on this journey is crucial. How visible or invisible are you to your stakeholders is a key question, but not one that is easy to assess yourself. If SSAT can help in anyway, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.