How to actually read an Ofsted rating (and what it misses)

Every parent searching for a school does the same thing first: they look for one of four words. Outstanding. Good. Requires improvement. Inadequate. Those words carry enormous weight — they move house prices, fill waiting lists and empty them. But an Ofsted rating is a snapshot, not a livestream, and reading it well takes about five minutes more than reading it badly.

What the rating actually measures

Inspectors grade a school across several judgement areas — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership. The headline grade is a summary of those, not an average of exam results. A school in a challenging catchment can be Outstanding; a school with strong results can Require Improvement if teaching quality is drifting.

Check the date before the word

This is the part most people skip. Outstanding schools were, for years, exempt from routine reinspection — which means some Outstanding badges were earned a decade ago under a different framework, a different head, and possibly a very different school. In the MoveCompass School Finder, every rating shows its inspection date right next to it. A "Good — inspected last year" can be a safer signal than an "Outstanding — inspected 2014".

Three questions the rating can't answer

• Will my child get in? Ratings say nothing about catchment pressure. A brilliant school two streets away is irrelevant if the effective catchment is one street.
• Does it fit my child? A school Outstanding at academics may be ordinary at pastoral care, sport, or SEN support — the sub-judgements in the full report tell you more than the headline.
• Which way is it trending? Compare the latest report with the previous one. Improving "Good" beats declining "Outstanding" more often than not.

How to use this on MoveCompass

Search any postcode in the School Finder and you'll see every school within your radius, colour-coded by rating, each with its inspection date, ages, capacity and contact details from the official DfE register. Sort by "Best Ofsted first", then sanity-check the dates — that combination is the honest version of the school search everyone does anyway.