Ofsted Questions And Answers: What Inspectors Ask Leaders, Staff And Pupils In 2026/27

When you get the call, you’ll be reaching for an easy way to prep at speed; these Ofsted questions will cover most of the bases. Inspectors want to know how you know what’s happening in your school, what you’re doing about it and whether it’s working for the pupils who find school hardest.

This guide sets out the questions Ofsted inspectors ask under the school inspection toolkit and operating guide in use from September 2026, organised by who they’re likely to ask: headteachers and senior leaders first, then governors, subject leaders, SENCos and inclusion leads, teachers, teaching assistants, office staff and pupils.

Under each set of questions there’s a short note on what a good answer shows. It’s written by Zoe Hardman, a primary SENCo, and draws on questions school leaders, teachers and governors have shared with us from their own inspections.

Key takeaways

• Inspectors no longer run subject deep dives. They join leaders on learning walks, look at pupils’ work, talk to pupils and staff, and follow a small sample of pupils – usually around six – in detail through case sampling.
• Questions are organised around the evaluation areas in the toolkit: inclusion, curriculum and teaching, achievement, attendance and behaviour, personal development and wellbeing, and leadership and governance, with safeguarding judged separately.
• Most questions ask how you know something, so a good answer names the evidence you looked at and what you changed once you’d seen it.
• Ofsted says it doesn’t need documents produced specially for an inspection, so prepare your staff to talk about what they do every day.

The 11 questions almost every school is asked

Whatever your phase or size, expect some version of these.

1. How do you know what’s working in your school, and what isn’t? (leadership and governance)
2. How did you design your curriculum, and why is it sequenced the way it is? (curriculum and teaching)
3. How do you know pupils have learned what you intended them to learn? (achievement)
4. How do you identify pupils with SEND, and how quickly does support follow? (inclusion)
5. How are you spending your pupil premium, and how do you know it’s making a difference? (inclusion)
6. How do you challenge the pupils who find the work easiest? (curriculum and teaching)
7. How do you make sure behaviour is managed consistently across the school? (attendance and behaviour)
8. What do you do when a pupil’s attendance starts to drop? (attendance and behaviour)
9. How do you support pupils’ wellbeing? (personal development and wellbeing)
10. What training have staff had this year, and how do you support new staff? (leadership and governance)
11. How do staff know what to do if they’re worried about a pupil? (safeguarding)

The rest of this guide breaks these down by role, so each person can prepare for the questions they’re most likely to be asked.

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How Ofsted questions work in 2026/27

What’s changed since the 2019 framework

Since November 2025, schools have received Ofsted report cards with a grade for each evaluation area, in place of a single overall judgement. Our guide to Ofsted ratings explains the five-point scale. The new Ofsted framework also changed the language of inspection. The current toolkit and operating guide make no mention of deep dives, cultural capital or quality of education. Intent and implementation now sit under curriculum and teaching, and impact sits under achievement.

What happens on the ground has changed too. Inspectors spend time with the headteacher at the start of the day, then join leaders on learning walks so they can connect what leaders tell them with what they see. They look at pupils’ work as they go and talk to pupils about their learning. The Ofsted inspection framework post explains each stage in more detail.

The evaluation areas inspectors ask about

Every question in this guide links back to one of these. The Ofsted toolkit sets out what inspectors look for in each, and the grade descriptors show what separates one grade from the next.

• Inclusion
• Curriculum and teaching
• Achievement
• Attendance and behaviour
• Personal development and wellbeing
• Leadership and governance
• Early years and post-16 provision, where the school has them
• Safeguarding, which is judged as met or not met

Who inspectors talk to

The operating guide, Ofsted’s guidance for inspectors, sets out who they must or should meet over the two days to gather evidence:

• the headteacher, from the notification call onwards
• the designated safeguarding lead, on day 1
• the SENCo, with the lead inspector present for at least part of the meeting
• the designated teacher for looked-after and previously looked-after children
• those responsible for governance
• early career teachers and their mentors
• subject and other leaders, in focused leadership meetings and on learning walks
• staff, after inspectors have read the staff questionnaire
• pupils, including with no other adults present
• parents, through Parent View and informal conversations

The notification call and the planning call

The call usually comes between 9.30 and 10am, and the inspector will ask to speak to the headteacher. Expect to be asked whether you’d like to choose a nominee to work with inspectors, and to agree a time for the planning call later that day.

The planning call can take up to 90 minutes and is normally held by video. It covers your school’s context, your priorities, the pupils you’ll be asked to list for case sampling and the timetable for the two days. Encourage another senior leader to join you. For a full section 5 inspection, the inspector will also ask for the single central record early on.

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28 Ofsted questions for headteachers and senior leaders

Headteachers are asked about every evaluation area, so this section follows the toolkit. You won’t be asked all of these, but a good number will come up in some form across the two days.

Leadership and governance

• What are your priorities for the school, and why those?
• How do you know what’s working and what isn’t?
• What have you changed in the last year as a result of what you found?
• How do you manage teacher workload and staff wellbeing?
• What professional development have staff had, and how did you choose it?
• How do governors or trustees support and challenge you?

Curriculum and teaching

• How did you design your curriculum, and how is it sequenced?
• How do you make sure it’s taught consistently across year groups and subjects?
• How do you make sure pupils build strong foundations in reading, writing and maths?
• Which subjects are strongest at the moment, and which need the most work?

Achievement

• How do you know pupils are making progress from their starting points?
• What do your published results and your own data tell you, and what don’t they show?
• How do you know pupils are ready for the next stage of their education?
• How do outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND compare with those of their peers?

Inclusion

• How do you identify pupils who face barriers to their learning or wellbeing?
• How is your pupil premium spent, and how do you know it’s working?
• What do you do when a new pupil arrives mid-year?
• How do you make sure everyday teaching meets the needs of pupils with SEND?

Attendance and behaviour

• How do you make sure your behaviour policy is applied consistently and fairly?
• What routines and expectations do pupils follow outside the classroom?
• What do you do when a pupil’s attendance starts to fall?
• How do you develop pupils’ motivation and attitudes to learning?
• How does attendance for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND compare with everyone else?

Personal development and wellbeing

• What does your personal development programme include, and how does the curriculum support it?
• How do you support pupils’ mental health and resilience?
• How do pupils learn to recognise risks to their wellbeing, online and offline?
• How do you prepare pupils for their future education, training and careers?
• How do you work with parents, carers and the wider community?

What a good answer shows

Inspectors are listening for a leader who knows the school’s strengths and weaknesses accurately and is acting on the most important ones first. One headteacher’s account of what Ofsted looks for shows how that played out in their school.

Specific examples carry more weight than general statements, so have two or three changes you’ve made ready to talk about, including why you made each one and what happened as a result. If you’re thinking about leadership more broadly, our posts on school leadership and school culture go into it in more depth.

6 Ofsted questions for the designated safeguarding lead

The lead inspector must meet the designated safeguarding lead on day 1, and inspectors focus on the culture of safeguarding throughout the inspection. These are the questions that come up most often:

• How do staff report a concern, and what happens next?
• How do you know every member of staff understands their safeguarding responsibilities?
• How do you identify pupils who may need early help?
• How do you work with children’s social care and other agencies?
• How do you keep pupils safe online?
• Do you have enough time, training and support to do the role?

Safeguarding is judged as met or not met, and a not met judgement has serious consequences whatever grades the school receives elsewhere. Our guides to Ofsted safeguarding and the most common safeguarding questions go into much more detail.

6 Ofsted questions for governors and trustees

Inspectors meet those responsible for governance, either in person or on a call. In an academy, that’s the board of trustees. Inspectors explore how governors shape the school’s direction and how they check that it’s working.

• How do you shape the school’s vision and strategic direction?
• How do you support and challenge the headteacher?
• How do you assure yourselves that policies are understood and followed across the school?
• How do you know the pupil premium is being spent well?
• How do you manage concerns or allegations about the headteacher?
• How do you take staff workload and wellbeing into account?

What a good answer shows

A good answer shows governors who know the school well enough to ask hard questions, and can give an example of a time they did.

24 Ofsted questions for subject leaders and heads of department

Inspectors no longer announce a deep dive in your subject, but subject leaders are still asked a familiar set of questions, often while walking round the school with an inspector. In primary schools, one leader may cover several subjects; in secondary, these questions usually go to the head of department. Our guide to subject leadership covers the role in more depth.

Curriculum design and sequencing

• How did you design your curriculum, and what was your starting point?
• How have you sequenced it, and why in that order?
• How does it build on what pupils learned in the previous year or key stage?
• If you use a published scheme, why did you choose it and how have you adapted it?
• What should every pupil know by the end of Year 6 (or Year 11)?
• What are the strengths of your subject at the moment, and what are you working on?
• What core concepts run through your curriculum? Can you talk through three examples?

Inspectors are looking for a leader who can explain why the curriculum is built the way it is. Being able to say what you’re still working on, and why, is a strong answer. If you’re reviewing your approach, the beginner’s guide to curriculum development and our posts on curriculum design and the spiral curriculum may help.

Knowing what’s happening across the school

• As subject lead, how do you know what’s happening in your subject across the school?
• What would you expect an inspector to see in a lesson?
• How do you make sure teachers and teaching assistants have the subject knowledge they need?
• What do staff and pupils think of your subject?

Assessment and filling gaps

• How do you check what pupils have learned, and how does that feed back into teaching?
• How do you find the gaps in pupils’ knowledge?
• How do you decide which pupils need extra support, and what that support should be?
• How do you know your assessments are accurate?

Short, regular checks of understanding tell you far more than an end-of-term test on its own. You can read more in these guides and resources:

• formative assessment – strategies for checking understanding in the lesson
• adaptive teaching, on responding to what those checks show
• GCSE diagnostic questions or a diagnostic assessment pack, if you want to find gaps quickly

Pupils who struggle and the most able

• What do you do to support pupils who are struggling?
• If all pupils are working on the same objectives, how do you make sure the most able are challenged?
• How are gaps in learning filled?

What happened to deep dive questions?

Under the 2019 framework, inspectors chose several subjects for a deep dive and asked the subject leader a long list of questions about them. Ofsted’s own analysis of deep dives in school inspections shows that inspectors had to look at reading in every primary inspection, and that maths came up in 97% of primary inspections in 2022/23. The renewed framework has no deep dives, but most of those questions are still asked during learning walks and focused leadership meetings, and they’re the ones in this section.

Questions in maths

As the subject Third Space Learning knows best, maths gets its own short list. These questions are drawn from the maths subject leader questions schools shared with us from earlier inspections:

• What is your vision for maths, and how does your scheme of work support it?
• How do you make sure pupils become fluent in number facts and calculation?
• How do you use concrete resources and pictorial representations, and how do you know they’re helping?
• How do you identify and address misconceptions?
• What opportunities do pupils have for reasoning and problem solving?
• How do you prepare pupils for the next key stage?

Before an inspection, it’s worth rereading Ofsted’s maths subject report. Alongside it, look at:

• the earlier maths research review
• our maths leaders’ Ofsted guide
• primary maths schemes of work and GCSE maths schemes of work
• the Maths Leader’s Toolkit

If you’re looking for resources that give pupils regular practice:

• Primary: Fluent in Five for daily arithmetic, Rapid Reasoning questions for reasoning, and our guide to White Rose Maths if that’s the scheme you follow.
• Secondary: Fluent in Five for secondary, KS3 maths resources, GCSE maths resources, GCSE revision guides, revision mats and the full secondary resource library.

18 Ofsted questions for SENCos, inclusion leads and designated teachers

The SENCo is one of the few people inspectors are required to meet, and the lead inspector will be in the room for at least part of that meeting. Inspectors may also invite other leaders with an inclusion role, such as the designated teacher for looked-after children, so it’s worth agreeing in advance who will speak to what.

SEND questions

Inclusion is now its own evaluation area, and the toolkit is specific about what inspectors look for. They want to see early and accurate assessment of pupils’ needs, a cycle of planning, action and review, and specialists brought in when they’re needed. The questions follow from that.

• How do you identify pupils with SEND, and how long does it usually take from a concern being raised to support being in place?
• How do class teachers know which pupils have additional needs and what to do about them?
• What does support for pupils with SEND look like in an ordinary lesson, before any extra intervention?
• How do you check whether a pupil’s support is working, and what happens if it isn’t?
• How do you involve parents in decisions about their child’s learning and support?
• When do you bring in external specialists, and how do you make sure their advice is followed?
• If you use alternative provision, how do you make sure it’s suitable and safe?
• How are pupils with EHC plans doing compared with their starting points?
• What does your published inclusion strategy say, and how does your school funding support it?

Expect inspectors to test your answers against what they see. If they’re case sampling a pupil with an EHC plan, they may ask that pupil’s teacher the same questions and look at the pupil’s work.

What a good answer shows

A good answer starts with everyday teaching, because the toolkit says the most effective inclusion strategy begins with high-quality inclusive teaching, which helps the pupils who find learning hardest and reduces the need for individual adaptations. So be ready to explain what teachers do in every lesson, and then how targeted support builds on it.

Quality first teaching covers the strategies that make the biggest difference. Use one or two real examples of pupils whose support you changed because the review showed it wasn’t working.

Pupil premium and disadvantaged pupils

The toolkit expects a pupil premium strategy that’s well thought through and based on evidence of what works. Our guide to pupil premium and Ofsted explains what inspectors look for.

• How do you provide for pupils eligible for the pupil premium?
• How did you decide how to spend it, and what evidence did you use?
• How do you know the spending is making a difference?
• What oversight do leaders and governors have of the spending?

If you’re reviewing your plan, start with our guide to writing a pupil premium strategy. Then:

• cost-effective pupil premium strategies and pupil premium intervention ideas for what to spend it on
• the Senior Leader’s Guide to Pupil Premium, which brings it together in one download
• our overview of pupil premium for the basics
• how schools are working to close the attainment gap

Intervention questions

• What interventions take place in school, and how do you choose them?
• How do you decide which pupils take part, and for how long?
• Who delivers interventions, and what training have they had?
• How do you check that an intervention is working, and what happens if it isn’t?
• How do interventions link to what pupils are learning in class?

Inspectors want to see that interventions are matched to a pupil’s actual gaps and that someone is checking the impact. Our guide to intervention strategies in schools is a good place to start. You may also find these useful:

• our guide to deciding whether you need a KS2 maths intervention
• Funding Your School’s Maths Interventions, for the budget side
• an ultimate pack of maths intervention lessons and a SATs maths intervention pack, if you want ready-made lessons

If tutoring in schools is part of your intervention offer, inspectors will ask about it in the same way as any other intervention. Our post on how Ofsted inspects tutoring covers what they look for.

There are often more pupils who need extra maths support than there are adults to give it, so one-to-one tutoring is hard to fit in. Our spoken AI maths tutor delivers low-cost one-to-one maths tutoring, and every lesson is written and approved by qualified maths teachers to follow an “I do, we do, you do” structure. Schools receive regular reports on the gaps diagnosed, concepts covered and progress over time, which SENCos and inclusion leads can use when inspectors ask how they know an intervention is working. Our guide to AI tutoring explains how this works in schools.

Schools use Skye for one-to-one tuition from Year 3 through to GCSE, including our Year 6 SATs tutoring programmes.

If you’re planning a tutoring programme, our free maths tutoring guide for school leaders covers how to choose and plan one, including the options for funding it. Our post on tutoring disadvantaged pupils looks at how to get the most from a programme for those pupils.

Case sampling

During the planning call, leaders are asked for a list of pupils who are disadvantaged, have SEND, are known (or were previously known) to children’s social care, or face other barriers to their learning or wellbeing. Inspectors choose a sample of around six of these pupils and follow their experience in detail, including at least one child with an EHC plan where the school has one. For each pupil, expect to be asked what their needs are and how you know the support in place is working. Inspectors will also want to speak to their teachers and look at their work.

16 Ofsted questions for teachers and early career teachers

During lesson visits and learning walks

• How does this lesson fit into the sequence for this unit?
• What did pupils learn before this, and what comes next?
• How do you know whether pupils have understood?
• What would you expect the teaching assistant to be doing during the lesson?
• How do you adapt the lesson for pupils who are finding it hard?

Inspectors visit lessons as part of learning walks rather than formal lesson observations, so expect a short conversation about what they’ve just seen.

Looking at pupils’ work

Inspectors review pupils’ work as they go round, and they’ll often ask the pupil about it too. Ofsted says it doesn’t evaluate individual workbooks or use work scrutiny to judge teachers’ marking.

• Can you talk me through this pupil’s book?
• Where does this piece of work fit in the sequence of lessons?
• What has this pupil learned since the start of the unit?
• What are their next steps?

Knowledge organisers can help pupils recap the core content of a unit; our guide to knowledge organisers explains how to use them, and there’s a free KS2 place value knowledge organiser to download.

Workload, wellbeing and CPD

• Do you feel supported by your curriculum and senior leaders?
• What training have you had this year?
• Do you have the tools and time you need to do your job well?
• How do leaders take your workload into account?

Answer these honestly, because inspectors meet staff to follow up themes from the anonymous staff questionnaire and they want to hear about your experience of working at the school. If your school is looking for low-cost ways to develop staff, collaborative lesson planning and shared resource banks such as the Third Space Learning maths hub both help.

Early career teachers

If your school has early career teachers, inspectors will arrange to meet them to hear how the school supports their development.

• How is your mentor supporting you?
• What training have you had through the early career framework?
• How has your teaching developed this year?

ECTs can bring a colleague to the meeting. Inspectors may also visit an ECT’s lessons and meet their mentor or induction tutor.

5 Ofsted questions for teaching assistants and support staff

Teaching assistants and support staff are often asked the same safeguarding and behaviour questions as teachers, plus questions about their own role.

• What would you do if you were worried about a pupil?
• How does behaviour management work in the school, and do you feel supported to follow the policy?
• What is your role in lessons and in interventions?
• What training have you had, and how has it helped you?
• How do you know what each pupil you support needs?

Specific answers help most, so be ready to name the training you’ve had and the intervention you run, say how you know it’s helping and explain how you’d report a concern about a pupil to the DSL. Our guide to using teaching assistants effectively covers what the research says about the role.

3 Ofsted questions for the school business manager and office staff

Office staff are less likely to be questioned, but they hold records inspectors ask for early on.

• Where is the single central record, and who keeps it up to date?
• How are visitors signed in and checked?
• How are attendance records kept and followed up?

Have the single central record ready from the start. Inspectors ask for it early so that leaders have time to correct any minor administrative omissions.

6 Ofsted questions for pupils

Inspectors talk to pupils of all ages at break and lunch, at the start and end of the day, during learning walks and in planned groups. Leaders must give inspectors the chance to speak to pupils with no other adults present.

• Do you enjoy your lessons? Which do you enjoy most?
• What are you learning about at the moment?
• What do you do if you’re stuck?
• Do you feel safe in school? Who would you talk to if you were worried?
• How do people behave in lessons and at break time?
• What would you change about your school?

Inspectors may also listen to pupils read. Inspectors will notice if pupils’ answers have been rehearsed, so there’s no point preparing them.

5 Ofsted questions for EYFS leaders

All the evaluation areas apply to the early years, and early years provision in a school is also graded on its own. Questions for the EYFS leader and early years practitioners usually include:

• How do you meet the statutory requirements of the EYFS?
• How do you find out about each child’s starting points when they join?
• How do you develop children’s communication and language?
• How do you support children with SEND and disadvantaged children in the early years?
• How do you build parent partnerships in the early years?

This guide covers early years in a school setting, and nurseries, childminders and other early years settings are inspected using a separate early years toolkit.

The staff questionnaire and Parent View

Before and during the inspection, staff complete an anonymous online questionnaire and parents can respond through Ofsted’s Parent View survey, which stays open until midday on the final day. Inspectors read the responses, look for themes and then meet the staff best placed to talk about them. If the Parent View response rate is low, they may speak to parents and carers informally at the start or end of the day, without staff present.

It’s worth making sure staff know the questionnaire is coming and that parents know how to find Parent View.

How to prepare your staff for Ofsted questions

Ofsted says it doesn’t need leaders to produce documents specifically for an inspection, so preparation is mostly about making sure staff feel confident and prepared to talk about what they already do.

• Share the questions in this guide in a staff meeting and reflect on how you’d answer them as a school.
• Run a short mock learning walk so staff get used to explaining a lesson or a pupil’s work on the spot.
• Make sure everyone knows the safeguarding procedure and who the DSL is.
• Agree who will speak to which evaluation area in leadership meetings.
• If you can, talk to leaders in other schools that have been inspected recently about what they were asked and any good practice they’d pass on.
• Check in on staff over the two days. Inspectors are asked to consider the wellbeing of staff and leaders throughout, and leaders can ask for breaks.

It’s fine for staff to say they don’t know something and offer to find out. Our Ofsted inspection preparation guide covers the whole process. You can also download these to work through with your team:

• the new Ofsted framework toolkit checklist
• our Ofsted preparation guides

Where these questions come from

Zoe Hardman, a primary SENCo, wrote this guide drawing on her own experience of inspection. Many of the subject leader questions were first gathered from school leaders and teachers after inspections under the 2019 framework, and shared in the Primary Maths Subject Leaders Facebook group. We’d like to thank Linda Potter, Lauren Baker, Marcus O’Donohoe, Louise Betts and Wendy Cook, and the teachers and leaders who preferred to stay anonymous. We’ve updated the questions for the September 2026 toolkit and operating guide.

Ofsted questions and answers FAQs