Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to publish an equalities impact assessment of the decision for Ofsted to no longer produce single headline grades.

On 2 September, the government announced that the use of single headline grades for Ofsted’s school inspection would end with immediate effect, and that a new system of report cards would be launched from September 2025. Single headline grades were overly simplistic, being low information for parents and high stakes for schools.

Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation, the largest in Ofsted’s history, evidenced widespread concerns about single headline grades and the need for reform. Ofsted found that single headline grades were supported by only 3 in 10 professionals and 4 in 10 parents. The schools section of the consultation found that only 1 in 8 respondents agreed that the number of good and outstanding providers was reflective of the overall quality of the sector. Therefore, it was right for the government to act quickly and decisively to address this.

The department is currently engaging closely with Ofsted to develop proposals for new reporting arrangements, through a report card system, to capture the performance of schools in a much richer way, and to provide more helpful information to parents and support school improvement. The new reporting system will be accompanied by improved support arrangements through Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence teams. Proposals for the new arrangements will be subject to public consultation in the new year.

An equalities impact assessment will be carried out as part of the process of reform in the usual way.