The inspectorate’s judgements
If a school or governing body meets the statutory requirements for basic quality, then the school or governing body will be judged to be ‘adequate’. If they fail to meet the basic quality requirements, they will be judged to be ‘inadequate’. Schools may be judged to be ‘very weak’ if they perform below the applicable statutory standard. The inspection framework for each educational sector indicates when the judgement will be adequate, inadequate (or very weak). In addition to these judgements, the inspection may award a school or governing body a rating of ‘Good’. This counts on both the level of our standards as for a school or governing body as a whole. We have criteria that set out when a school board or school is inadequate, adequate or good (depending on the judgements of the standards) or when a school is very weak.
Rating of a ‘Good’ school on request
Governing bodies may also submit a request for a rating of ‘Good’ of a school. The rating is based on the school’s own ambitions and its related achievements. The purpose of such an assessment is to encourage governing bodies and schools to pursue greater quality improvements, beyond basic quality.
This can only be done if the school meets the basic quality standards and if the school has made demonstrable progress toward achieving its ambitions. The school board has to show us the evidence by providing us with a self-evaluation.
For more information see Inspection of potentially good schools.