Your Ofsted Grade Now Includes This

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A school I'm working closely with just had an Ofsted visit, and they were telling me about how they were not prepared for the wellbeing evaluation. It made me wonder how many schools have realised that since November 2025, every inspection includes a formal grade for how leaders support staff wellbeing.

Not as background context. As a named evaluation area, assessed on a five-point scale.

Most schools aren't fully prepared for what this actually asks. Not because their wellbeing provision is poor, but because the criteria contain one specific word that tends to get glossed over:

Comprehensive.

The Blind Spot

At the 'Strong' level, wellbeing support must be "highly effective, comprehensive and timely". Inspectors want evidence you’ve actively monitored pressure and changed things.

In most schools, these conversations naturally orbit around teaching staff. But the criteria don't say "teaching staff." They say staff.

That includes your school business manager, who is simultaneously running finance, HR, estates, and compliance. (The SBL Wellbeing Index 2026 notes workload remains the number-one challenge for 65% of respondents ).

It also includes the premises team. UNISON data from 2025 shows 61% of school support staff work unpaid overtime every week. Nearly four in ten are looking for better-paid jobs elsewhere. Those are not figures about a workforce that feels looked after.

Why This Matters Now

If your most experienced site manager leaves, the impact on your compliance programme—asbestos, fire safety, contractor oversight—is significant. That institutional knowledge is genuinely difficult to replace.

If an inspection conversation about staff wellbeing is going to use "comprehensive" as a benchmark, that conversation now formally extends to the people managing compliance and the estate. That makes the business case for including them much easier.

What Schools Can Do

None of this requires a massive new programme or significant cost. It just requires visibility.

• Check your surveys: If your annual staff survey doesn't go to the site team, you have a structural blind spot.
• Look at actual hours: Are your premises staff working beyond their contracted hours? A short conversation will tell you more than any formal survey.
• Update your action plan: Make sure premises and estate roles are actually named in your wellbeing interventions. A specific plan for the site team is more defensible than a general statement of support.

The new Ofsted framework hasn't created this problem. It has just made it harder to address it in a way that only covers part of the staff and called that comprehensive.

The work has always mattered. Now there's a formal reason to show it.

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Statlog....More then just compliance and premises software