Although Ofsted won't usually ask your school to do any formal preparation ahead of an inspection, it's good to know how quickly and easily you can access your data when needed. For more information on inspections, take a look at their Education Inspection Framework (EIF).
The Key have also put together a pack of resources to help schools understand what's expected of them before, during and after an inspection. It includes a pre-inspection checklist, role-specific question lists and easy-to-digest explainers. You can find this here on their website.
We've gathered together some of the questions they usually ask, and how to use ScholarPack to help prepare for each of them below.
Attendance
You'll need to be able to provide up to date attendance figures. They may ask for both your whole school figures, as well as attendance figures for special cohorts and specific groups of students, such as:
- Individual Year Groups
- Pupil Premium
- FSM
- EAL
- SEN
- A bespoke group of students, such as those in a Dynamic Group
- Comparative figures for special groups
This is by no means an exhaustive list of what Ofsted inspectors may ask to see regarding attendance. Below is a collection of our commonly requested reports that are worth being familiar with, via Reporting > Reports > Attendance (red tab):
This is a highly customisable report that has many options for reporting on special cohorts, as well as showing a detailed attendance breakdown for your selected students, including overall percentages for Lates and Unauthorised absences.
Please note:
This report includes former students as a default. This can be changed by unticking the check box. The 'Group' filters on this report are dynamic categories. If you select more than one, students need to fit into each category to pull through. Click here for more details if the report does not pull through as you expect.
This report will allow you to report on students with an overall attendance % within a set range, exclude specific students from attendance figures should you need to, and can report using dynamic groups
These reports will allow you to see details about students who are persistently absent. For a list of persistent absentees, you can also use the Custom Attendance Report.
These reports will allow you to see statistics about attendance codes.
For guidance on our other Attendance Reports, click here.
Enrolment and Student Demographics
Ofsted may ask for details about the number of students on roll, as well as any students that have been taken off roll. The following reports can be found via Reporting > Reports > Students (blue tab).
This report shows you a breakdown of all students on your roll for a specific date, and can be broken down by Year and Form.
This report details students who have joined and left your school over a specific time period.
This is a handy report that allows you to quickly pull together a range of information about the students at your school.
This report allows you to get a percentage and / or count summary for the basic demographic areas of your school (including gender, FSM, Ethnicity and PP). This is a great report if you're asked to provide percentages of different cohorts in your school.
Similar to the School Summary report, this will show you whole school statistics, but has a greater variety of cohort categories (for example SEN support and EHCP children show in separate columns). It can also be displayed by year or form group, ethnicity, or whole school.
For further guidance on reporting on Student Data, click here. For further guidance on reporting on Student Demographics, click here.
Behaviour and Conduct
Ofsted may ask to see records of specific types of behaviour and incidents, or a record of exclusions and suspensions. The following reports can be found via Reporting > Reports > Conduct (orange tab).
Please note:
Schools have the option to rename many of the conduct categories in the Admin > Config > Custom Relabelling area. If your school has renamed them, the names of your conduct reports may be different to the guidance. The icons however will still match.
The Incident Report is one of the most detailed and wide-ranging conduct reports available. This is due to the the fact Incident Types are easily expanded and customisable for schools to set up, so you can have as many or as few as you need. For more information on how to set these up, click here.
This report will display all types of exclusions that are recorded on student profiles (provided relevant E codes are also recorded on the register). You can filter this report to search for a specific exclusion category or reason, as well as use this report with different groups e.g. year, house or intervention groups.
For further guidance on Conduct Reporting options, click here.
Renamed Categories:
We recommend checking the reporting and recording capabilities of a category before renaming it, or using it to record a different type of conduct than it was intended for. Recording serious conduct events in a category designed to record events of a less serious nature may limit your ability to fully record and report on information for Ofsted.
Attainment and Progress
Ofsted may ask to see records of student attainment and progress, as well as how they compare to previous years. This will all depend on how you record school assessments in ScholarPack, and whether you use the STEPS or Simple Assessment setup.
STEPS Assessments
STEPS Assessment reports can be accessed via Reporting > Assessment. This article has a summary of all the STEPS reports, however below are a few commonly requested ones that may be particularly useful.
This report displays each student's results for each checkpoint, as well as their target. It shows overall progress from the start of the year and between each checkpoint.
These reports display student progress across two or three points in time.
This will give a fully comprehensive summary of an individual student's assessment data.
This will give a fully comprehensive summary of an individual student's assessment data.
For further guidance on STEPS reporting, click here.
Simple Assessments
Simple Assessment reporting can be accessed via Reporting > New Reports. This article has a full summary of how to build reports in this area. The most commonly used ones are the Attainment Report, and the Progress Report.
This will show a summary of how pupils are performing across the board, and can be customised and filtered to display different aspects or report on a more specific group of students.
This will show a summary of how students are progressing across the board, from one point in time to another. It can also be customised and filtered to display different aspects or report on a more specific group of students.
For further guidance on Simple Assessments reporting, click here.
Intervention groups
Ofsted may ask to see evidence of how you track and monitor students who have been identified as needing extra support. The easiest way to do this is through the Interventions area (Workspace > Interventions).
This article will take you through the specific reports we have for Intervention groups, including conduct, attendance, assessment and provisions.
Useful tip:
Whilst we have specific reports available in the Interventions area, you can also use many of the reports in our Reporting > Reports area with Intervention groups to find out a wider range of data, much the same as how you would report on a Dynamic or Static group.
Formative Markbooks
These can be used to demonstrate how far along in the curriculum students are, and their level of understanding across different components of a subject.
These two reports give an overview and percentage of student progress against formative statements. One is broken down by student, the other by cohort.
For further guidance on using the formative markbooks, click here. Alternatively, this guide has a handy section on how to analyse your data.
Safeguarding
Ofsted will require access to safeguarding information. This may include looking at the Single Central Record (Central Register).
This is a detailed record of all staff members at your school, and includes all essential information for contracted and non-contracted personnel. You can access it via Admin > Personnel > Central Register. This article has further guidance on how to use this area and keep it up to date.
Please note:
You will need the Admin, CR Viewer and CR Editor user roles for this.
You can use the Daily Check, Not in School, and Not registered functions (available by clicking on the Register tab at the top of your ScholarPack screen) to monitor whether students have been correctly registered for the day, as well as see which registers haven't been completed.
Other safeguarding requests:
Ofsted may also ask to see information about the complaints process, and any safeguarding and social care referrals. We currently don't have a specific place to store that information on ScholarPack - please speak with your school's safeguarding team who will be able to tell you how and where your school records that information.
Staff
Ofsted may have questions about staff wellbeing, as well as how you support their professional development. The below reports are accessible via Reporting > Reports > Staff (green tab)
This report has all the basic details you may be asked for, and can also pull through information such as classes assigned, medical and accident information, and contract and training information. It is a highly customisable report that is worth being familiar with.
This reports on training courses that teachers have completed.
Note: For a training course to pull through to this report, it needs to have been assigned to a teacher in the Admin > Personnel > Training Courses area first, and then also entered on the Staff member's profile as completed. Assigning a course in the Training Courses area only makes the course available for the staff member, it does not automatically mark it as completed by them.
Other Useful Tools
The Custom Report
The Custom Report (accessible via Reporting > Custom Report > New Report) is an extremely useful report for student data. It has a wide range of reporting options and is highly customisable, which is very useful if you're looking to report on several aspects combined into one report.
This article goes through the details of building one, and it is well worth being familiar with in case Ofsted ask you for a report on data that has no purpose built or standalone report.
Report Builder - New Reports
Note: This option is only available if your school has the 'Simple Assessments' module. If your school doesn't, please refer to information about the Custom Report.
The report builder is really useful tool. The options are slightly more limited than the Custom Report itself, but it has the advantage in terms of customisable layout options and when cross referencing between data items, for example students who fit into one cohort but not another. It will show you student name and form as a default. You can then add filters which will filter out students who don't apply, or groups, which will group students accordingly.
When reporting on more than one 'grouping', it will organise students accordingly, making it very easy to gauge the numbers in each group quickly, as well as displaying in an easy-to-interpret format. For example, if reporting on Gender, SEN and PP, it will organise students in groupings of Yes / No as related to each category. Check the tabs below for examples of the different views.
This will allow you to view by student, so you can easily check which students qualify for each category.
This gives an overall number summary for each category. Clicking the number in each field will bring up a list of the student's names, year groups and other aspects. You can then export this to be a standalone report for that specific group combination e.g. a list of students what are SEN: No and PP: No, or a list of students who are SEN: Yes and PP: No.
This gives an overall numbers comparison between Key Groups. It also pulls through other markers, such as birth season and gifted and talented. Clicking the number in each field will give you an exportable list of students who fit that group.
Please note: As this is a 'by group' breakdown, it automatically removes any groupings you've added, and gives a breakdown of the entire year group(s) you selected for the report. Each list is for students who fit that particular group, so their names may appear in more than one list. To narrow down the selection, you can use the filter by section on the right hand side of the report.
Intervention, Dynamic and Static groups are also included as reporting options in this area.
Student Custom Fields
These are a very useful tool for recording data that otherwise has no specific field on ScholarPack; for example, students who are educated outside of their DOB year group. They have their own reporting area, and can be included in the larger Custom Report if needed. You can create these in the Admin > Config area, and report on them via Reporting > Reports. Click here for guidance on how create and use them, and here for how to report on them.