One in 10 FE and skills Ofsted inspections were delayed at the provider’s request in the last financial year, figures reveal.
Of the 818 further education and skills inspections and visits carried out in the year to March 31, 2025, 114 providers requested deferral. Of those, 88, or 77 per cent, were accepted.
That means 23 per cent of requests were rejected, the highest proportion out of all of Ofsted’s inspection remits covering schools, early years and social care.
There were also four cases where an FE and skills provider requested a pause to their inspection. Each of those were agreed.
This is the first time the watchdog has released data covering inspection deferrals, pauses and post-quality assurance changes to grades. It follows a new policy aimed at lessening the impact of inspections on leaders’ wellbeing.
The mechanisms allowing providers to request an inspection be delayed or put on hold were introduced in January 2024 as part of a raft of reforms in response to the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry.
A coroner ruled in late 2023 that the Ofsted inspection of Caversham Primary School in Reading had contributed to her death.
Ofsted guidance says inspections should only be deferred in “exceptional circumstances”. It lays out examples, which include where a senior leader’s wellbeing “would be severely impacted” and there is no other senior leader to step in.
Other examples include major incidents, such as the death of a learner, closure due to staff training or severe weather.
The data also revealed that during the 24/25 financial year, nine inspections were deemed “incomplete” while additional evidence was gathered.
This policy was introduced in September 2024 and allows inspectors to pause an inspection to allow a provider to resolve safeguarding “where that is the only issue”.
The anonymised data also showed there were four cases that year where a provider’s overall effectiveness grade was changed following Ofsted’s quality assurance processes. This data excluded cases where the headline grade was changed as a result of an upheld complaint by the provider.
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