Ofsted Explorer

Every secondary school's report card beside its GCSE results, read four ways: against the national average, against 50 statistically similar schools, against a contextual model, and by its last Progress 8. Results are DfE provisional 2025/26; report cards are Ofsted's latest inspections to 31 October 2026.

Use the arrow keys and Enter to choose. The page opens on a randomly chosen school each time.

—

Report card i

Context used to find similar schools i

One set of results, read four ways i

Attainment 8, 2025/26 provisional. A positive gap means the school's score is higher than the comparator. The bar shows the gap on a scale of ±15 points.

Lens	Compared with	School	Comparator	Gap	Gap	Reading

Where the school sits among its 50 similar schools i

Attainment 8, 2025/26. Dots are spread vertically only so they do not overlap.

Compare with the official IDSR list i

Paste the URNs of your official similar schools, separated in any way.

—

The 50 similar schools i

Sorted by Attainment 8. Click a row to open that school.

School	Local authority	A8	Disadv. %	Prior att.	Own gap	Achievement

Every secondary school: results against context i

Coloured by report card grade in the chosen area; grey means no report card yet. The selected school is the blue diamond, its similar schools are ringed.

Across Colour by

ExceptionalStrong standardExpected standardNeeds attentionUrgent improvementNot yet inspected

Does the replica behave like Ofsted's model? i

Inspected secondaries by where the replica places their 2024/25 results against their similar schools, beside Ofsted's own published split.

Achievement grade	Schools	Above %	Close to %	Below %	Ofsted published (above / close / below)

Report card grades by pupils' deprivation, all phases i

Phase Area

Quintile 1 is the least deprived fifth, quintile 5 the most deprived. Numbers in brackets are schools with a grade in that area.

How to read this

Raw results are not the school's effectAttainment 8 tracks intake closely. The national comparison mostly tells you about the intake.

Similar schools ask a fairer questionHow did schools with a comparable intake do? It is a comparison, not a judgement, and Ofsted says it does not decide grades.

One year is noisyA cohort of 150 pupils can move several points from year to year for reasons nobody controls. Look for patterns over years.

This is a replicaThe official groups use pupil-level data that is not public. Treat these neighbours as a close approximation and check the IDSR.

Method, sources and limits

Similar schools, open replica. Following the DfE and Ofsted technical note (16 July 2026): each factor is standardised against the national mean and standard deviation; schools are matched by weighted squared Euclidean distance; each school's 50 nearest neighbours form its group, and the comparator is their average Attainment 8. Published weights: prior attainment 0.46, FSM6 0.14, POLAR4 0.11, SEN support 0.09, pupil stability 0.06, IDACI 0.06, EHC plans 0.04, EAL 0.03, pupil numbers 0.02. Public proxies used: prior attainment profile of the 2023/24 GCSE cohort (carried from a predecessor school where the URN changed; estimated for 34 schools); disadvantaged and non-mobile shares of the 2025/26 GCSE cohort; Ofsted's pupil-based IDACI quintile; January 2026 census pupil numbers and EAL; January 2026 SEN support and EHC plans. POLAR4 is left out and the other weights rescaled. A gap counts as significant when it exceeds 1.96 standard errors (pupil-level spread 14.2 points, estimated from 2023/24 Progress 8 confidence intervals, plus the group's spread); "well above" or "well below" also needs a gap larger than one standard deviation of the group.

Contextual model. One regression of Attainment 8 on the same factors across all schools, in the spirit of the DfE's contextual value added measure of 2006 to 2010. It explains about three quarters of the variation between schools. A gap within 2 points is read as in line.

Progress 8. The last published figure, for 2023/24, carried from a predecessor school where the URN changed. The DfE did not publish it for 2024/25 or 2025/26.

Sources. DfE, Key stage 4 performance 2025/26 (provisional, 28 October 2026), institution level, with 2024/25 and 2023/24 final. DfE, Schools, pupils and their characteristics, January 2026. DfE, Special educational needs in England, January 2026. Ofsted, management information, latest inspections as at 31 October 2026. DfE and Ofsted, Similar schools model for attainment: technical note. Ofsted, Considering the context of schools in challenging circumstances (2025/26).

Limits. Provisional results are revised in February 2027. None of these measures is a judgement on a school, and none should be read as one.

Read the analysis behind this tool: I checked every Ofsted report card. Results alone don't explain the gap.