By Steve Kirkpatrick, former Headteacher and Ofsted Lead Inspector, and Co-Founder of Intelligent Evidence
As Ofsted moves towards the new 2025 education inspection framework, schools and inspectors alike are preparing for a cultural shift: from data-driven judgement to dialogue-driven understanding.
For Steve Kirkpatrick, a former headteacher and Ofsted lead inspector, this change has the potential to make inspections fairer, calmer and more constructive, but only if both sides are ready for it.
A welcome change with hidden pressures
“In the old system, inspections were planned almost to the minute,” recalls Steve. “I used to block out every five minutes of the day. There was simply no room for genuine conversation.”
The new framework promises to change that.
By increasing inspection team capacity and introducing report card style gradings, inspectors will have more time to explore a school’s story in context, not just the data on paper.
But new approaches, such as laptop free walkthroughs, also bring hidden challenges.
“On one surface level, that’s absolutely brilliant because it encourages a relationship rather than encouraging someone to stare at a keyboard,” he explains. “However, it actually increases the risk to schools that inspectors will not be able to recollect and record evidence shared with them.”
The risk of lost stories
For Steve, the shift to a more conversational style of inspection is positive but comes with it’s challenges.
“When things move fast, there’s a real risk that valuable context is lost in the moment. You’re relying on inspectors to listen and remember everything they’ve heard from headteachers, leaders and pupils. That’s a lot to hold, and sometimes, the story a school is trying to tell can be lost.”
The pressure on heads
Steve understands how the weight of inspection can concentrate on the headteacher. He describes how vital it is for leaders to protect staff from that stress. But by its very nature, masking this pressure can have a real impact on leaders.
“It’s the difficulty of leadership in a school. If you show that pressure, if you leak that pressure out into the wider system, it becomes incredibly toxic. Most of your colleagues have no control, and if you release pressure onto people who can’t do anything about it, it changes the whole culture of a school. You could feel it when you walk in to a school, you could just tell when something wasn’t right. That kind of atmosphere affects everyone, and ultimately it impacts the children.”
A more constructive future
For Steve, these changes open the door to opportunities for a more balanced approach to inspection.
“When inspections become about constructive conversation based around a collective discussion of the evidence, rather than constantly moving to the next activity due to time constraints, everyone benefits,” he says. “School leaders feel calmer and inspectors can make better, fairer judgements.”
That belief led him to co-found Intelligent Evidence, a platform that offers leaders a practical way to bring together any existing school documentation (such as curriculum plans, attendance data and inclusion logs), then automatically map them to the new grade descriptors. It is designed to support clarity, calmness and confidence in the inspection process.
“This is not about replacing professional judgement,” adds Steve. “It is about making that judgement better informed. When inspectors can see a clear picture of evidence early, the conversation becomes more constructive for everyone.”
Tips to prepare
Drawing on his experience as a headteacher and inspector, Steve Kirkpatrick suggests focusing on a few simple, practical steps when preparing for an inspection:
- Have your timetables and contextual figures to hand
- Consider how you are going to cover staff
- Think about your school’s recent priorities
- Know where you evaluate your school against the scale
- Be able to articulate your approach to inclusion
- Consider preparing case studies well in advance
