What happened to “Outstanding”?
The single Outstanding grade was abolished in September 2024. Here’s what shows up instead — and why an old Outstanding on a school’s gate may say less than you think.
The short version
From September 2024, Ofsted stopped giving any school a single overall grade. Since November 2025, inspections produce a report card instead: several areas of school life, each graded on a five-point scale whose top grade is Exceptional.
“Exceptional” is not a rename
It’s tempting to read Exceptional as Outstanding with a new name. The numbers say otherwise. In the report cards published up to 31 May 2026, just 18 of 1,329 re-inspected schools were graded Exceptional for Achievement — around 1.4%. Under the old system, roughly one in ten schools held Outstanding. Exceptional is designed to be rare; the everyday “this school is doing its job well” grades are Expected standard and Strong standard.
Why old Outstandings can be very old
Between 2012 and November 2020, schools graded Outstanding were legally exempt from routine re-inspection. Some went a decade or more without an inspector visiting. So an Outstanding badge can describe a school as it was many years — and several headteachers — ago. Always check the inspection date next to the grade.
How we show it
On this site, schools still holding an old grade are drawn with a hollow marker and the word “legacy” — and we deliberately never map old Outstanding onto the new Exceptional. The full rule is public.
Common questions
- Is “Exceptional” the new “Outstanding”?
- No. Exceptional is a per-area grade on the new report cards, and it is far rarer: in the report cards published up to 31 May 2026, only 18 of 1,329 inspected schools received Exceptional for Achievement — about 1.4%. Roughly one school in ten held the old Outstanding.
- My child’s school is still “Outstanding”. Is that current?
- Check the inspection date. Schools graded Outstanding were exempt from routine re-inspection between 2012 and late 2020, so many Outstanding grades are years old. The school keeps the label until it is re-inspected under the report-card framework.
- Will old grades disappear?
- Gradually. Ofsted re-inspects schools over several years, and each re-inspection replaces the old single grade with a report card. Until then, old and new grades coexist — and Ofsted says they are not directly comparable.
Grade counts computed from Ofsted’s published management information, latest inspections as at 31 May 2026 (OGL v3).