Ofsted Inspection Date Predictor

When will my school be inspected next?

Ofsted does not publish a forward schedule, so no tool can tell you the date. What can be estimated — and estimated reasonably well — is the window in which an inspection becomes likely, based on how long schools in your position have actually waited in the past.

The predictor takes a school's most recent inspection date and its current grade, applies the calibrated reinspection interval for that grade, adjusts for two factors shown to matter statistically, and returns a central estimate with a confidence window around it. The window is the honest part: it reflects genuine spread in the underlying data rather than implying precision that does not exist.

How often does Ofsted reinspect, by grade?

The intervals used are calibrated from observed inspection timing, not from policy statements. Schools graded Outstanding, Good, Exceptional, Strong or Expected sit on an interval of roughly 1,553 days — about four and a quarter years — with a standard deviation of around 293 days.

Schools graded Requires improvement or Needs attention are reinspected considerably sooner: an interval of around 960 days, roughly 32 months, with a much tighter spread (standard deviation about 90 days). That tightness is itself informative — this tier is the most predictable of the three.

Schools graded Inadequate or Urgent improvement sit on an interval of about 783 days, a little over two years, with a wide spread of around 295 days. This figure has been revised upward twice as better data became available, which is worth knowing if you are comparing against an older estimate.

How is the prediction calculated?

The intervals come from survival analysis — specifically Kaplan-Meier estimation with a Weibull fit — run over inspection-gap records extracted from the platform's own production dataset. Survival analysis is used deliberately rather than a simple median of completed gaps, because a naive median silently discards every school that has not yet been reinspected.

Those not-yet-reinspected schools are right-censored observations: you know they have waited at least this long, which is real information. Dropping them biases estimates downward, and correcting that is exactly what moved the Inadequate-tier estimate from an earlier, too-short figure to its current value.

On top of the grade interval, two further adjustments can apply as time ratios: the school's region, and one inspection-history pattern. Schools whose last graded inspection was lower than the one before, and which have since had an ungraded inspection, have been reinspected about a month sooner than other schools on the same grade, so their window is moved earlier.

Some ungraded inspection reports said the school's next inspection would be a graded one, because the grade might not be as high if it were graded then. The outcome paragraph of every relevant report has been read, and these schools have been reinspected a median of about 874 days (roughly two and a half years) after that ungraded inspection, well before the standard interval, so the forecast uses that timing instead.

Secondary, primary and special schools are calibrated separately: each sector has its own interval, region adjustments and forecast curve, because Ofsted's inspection teams for the three rarely overlap and their timing differs. For example, secondary schools in the South East have been reinspected sooner than average while primary schools there have been reinspected later; combining the sectors hid both.

Region effects are re-estimated every month from inspections under the current framework only (since November 2025), separately for each sector, because regional inspection patterns changed when the framework did. A region is adjusted only when its effect is statistically significant after allowing for every region being tested at once, and holds in both halves of the period; each update is reviewed before it goes live. A sector without enough inspections for an estimate keeps the standard values rather than borrowing another sector's.

Region effects run in both directions and are small, typically one to four per cent. The adjustment is clamped so no single school can be moved more than modestly from its grade baseline.

What does not affect the prediction?

Several factors were tested against real inspection timing under the current framework and found to make no measurable difference, so they are excluded: a grade rising or falling on its own; the trend in its published results over the last three years (KS2 and KS4 attainment, compared with the national figure each year); and Parent View survey results. Factors are only included where the evidence supports them, and the page tells you which factors actually moved a given school's date — if none did, it says nothing rather than inventing a rationale.

How accurate is it, and how is that checked?

Predictions are statistical estimates, not guarantees. Ofsted can inspect any school at any time, and does — for example in response to a complaint or a safeguarding concern. The predictor is useful for planning horizons, not for diary entries.

Accuracy is monitored continuously. As real inspections land, outcomes are logged against the predictions that preceded them, and a monthly recalibration process proposes revised intervals when the evidence has moved. Those proposals are reviewed before going live, and the current live values take precedence over the defaults in code. This is why the published intervals here have changed over time, and will change again.

One genuine limitation is worth stating plainly: the November 2025 framework is still young, so only a small number of complete inspection cycles have run entirely within it. The calibration leans on a longer history of inspection timing, which is the strongest evidence available, but confidence will improve as new-framework cycles complete.