Corporate report

Ofsted equality objectives progress review: supporting data as at 31 March 2022

Updated 31 May 2023

Applies to England

Introduction

Ofsted reports progress against its equality objectives in its Annual Report and Accounts. This report provides supporting data about our workforce profile and recruitment data by protected characteristic. You can also view previous reports that show our progress.

Under the Public Sector Equality Duty 2011, we have a specific duty to publish information relating to the protected characteristics of our employees. As our equality objectives focus on reducing under-representation of some groups, we publish information relating to our workforce demographics and recruitment outcomes.

In this report, we have rounded to whole figures. This means that some data sets may not add up to 100% and some figures are rounded down to 0% (even though they do represent more than zero employees in reality). The data is based on what information individuals have chosen to declare with the organisation relating to their protected characteristics and other sensitive details. Therefore, we are only able to report the data that individuals have provided us with.

Workforce profile

Age

Figure 1: Age profile between 2020 and 2022

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

Disability

Figure 2: Disability profile between 2020 and 2022

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

Mental health and well-being

Ofsted has Disability Confident Leader status. This includes a commitment to voluntarily report on our workforce’s mental health. This information is collected through the Civil Service People Survey (CSPS) and represents responses from 1,427 employees during the 2021 survey, which took place during the 2021–22 reporting period.

Self-reported mental health

Figure 3: Self-reported overall mental health in the CSPS 2021 and 2020

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

PERMA Index and Proxy Stress Index

The CSPS uses a measurement called the Proxy Stress Index to understand the conditions that contribute to stressful environments. The lower the score, the less stressful the environment. Ofsted had a Proxy Stress Index score of 24% in 2021, which is an increase of one percentage point from 2020. The score for all civil servants in 2021 was 28%.

There is a second measurement known as the PERMA Index, which measures the extent to which employees are flourishing at work in terms of well-being and happiness. Our PERMA score was 78% in 2021. This has remained the same since 2020. The PERMA index score for all civil servants during 2021 was 74%.

Ethnicity

The Race Disparity Unit recommends that all government organisations use the same standards in ethnicity reporting, where it is possible to break down this information.

We have broken down the information in Table 1 according to these standards, which means that it differs slightly to previously published information.

Table 1: Ethnicity profile between 2021 and 2022: percentage of employees in ethnicity categories

	% White	% Asian	% Black	% Mixed	% Other	Not known/declared
2022	85	6	3	0	1	4
2021	86	6	3	0	2	4

^{Note: Due to rounding, numbers in tables do not add up to 100.}

Religious belief

Table 2: Religious profile between 2020 and 2022

Some shorthand is used in this table [u] = low reliability.

Religion or belief	% 2020	% 2021	% 2022
No religion	36	37	39
Christian	45	45	45
Buddhist	[u]	[u]	[u]
Hindu	2	1	1
Jewish	[u]	[u]	[u]
Muslim	3	2	2
Sikh	1	1	1
Other	2	2	1
Not known/declared	12	11	10

^{Note: Percentages relating to fewer than 10 individuals have been supressed. This is represented by [u].
Due to rounding, numbers in tables do not add up to 100.}

Gender

Figure 4: Gender profile between 2020 and 2022

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

Sexual orientation

Figure 5: Sexual orientation profile between 2020 and 2022

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

Recruitment information

In Tables 3 and 4 (below), workforce groups have been split according to roles that do not require an assessment for applicants to progress to interview (primarily administrative, professional, and technical (APT) roles) and those that do (primarily inspector and inspector manager roles). You can also view our recruitment information for previous years.

Our recruitment approach uses blind sifting of applications. Personal information, including ethnicity, is excluded from the recruitment information shared with the sifting panel.

The tables below indicate that there was an imbalance between the outcomes of applications from ethnic minority candidates and those from White candidates for APT roles. We are committed to increasing the number of staff from the minority groups that are currently under-represented in Ofsted’s workforce.^{[footnote 1]} This includes investigating the causes of the imbalance mentioned above, as part of our objective activity during 2023.

Table 3: Roles not requiring assessment stage (primarily administrative, professional, and technical roles) during the financial year 2021–22

Some shorthand is used in this table [u] = low reliability.

Gender	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Female	56	59	65
Male	41	38	32
Other/Not declared	3	4	[u]

Ethnicity	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Asian	21	13	12
Black	12	6	[u]
Mixed/Other	6	4	3
White	56	73	78
Not declared	5	5	5

Sexual orientation	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Heterosexual	82	80	83
LGB/Other	9	10	9
Not declared	9	9	8

Religious belief	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Buddhist	1	[u]	[u]
Christian	29	26	21
Hindu	3	2	[u]
Jewish	1	[u]	[u]
Muslim	14	8	7
Sikh	2	[u]	[u]
Other	1	[u]	[u]
No religion	40	52	60
Not declared	9	9	8

Disability	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Disability	11	13	10
No disability	85	84	88
Not declared	4	4	[u]

Applicant type	% Application received	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Internal to Ofsted	5	20	31
Wider Civil Service	22	19	18
External	73	61	51

^{Note: Percentages relating to fewer than 10 individuals have been supressed. This is represented by [u].
Due to rounding numbers in tables do not add up to 100.}

Table 4: Roles that require an assessment stage (primarily inspection and regulation roles) during the financial year 2021–22

Gender	% Application received	% Invited to assessment	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Female	67	67	66	69
Male	32	33	33	31
Other/Not declared	1	[u]	[u]	[u]

Ethnicity	% Application received	% Invited to assessment	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Asian	8	6	4	[u]
Black	5	4	3	4
Mixed/Other	3	3	3	[u]
White	81	86	89	90
Not declared	3	1	[u]	[u]

Sexual orientation	% Application received	% Invited to assessment	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Heterosexual	90	90	89	87
LGB/Other	6	6	7	8
Not declared	4	4	4	5

Religious belief	% Application received	% Invited to assessment	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Buddhist	[u]	[u]	[u]	0
Christian	51	53	51	54
Hindu	1	1	[u]	[u]
Jewish	1	1	[u]	[u]
Muslim	4	2	[u]	[u]
Sikh	2	1	[u]	[u]
Other	1	1	[u]	[u]
No religion	34	36	40	40
Not declared	6	5	4	3

Disability	% Application received	% Invited to assessment	% Invited to interview	% Offer or Reserve list
Disability	5	4	4	[u]
No disability	92	93	93	95
Not declared	4	3	3	[u]

^{Note: Percentages relating to fewer than 10 individuals have been supressed. This is represented by [u].
Due to rounding, numbers in tables do not add up to 100.}

Annex: data tables for figures

Data for figure 1: Age profile between 2020 and 2022

Age	2020	2021	2022
65	2%	2%	2%
60	7%	7%	8%
50	31%	31%	32%
40	28%	29%	30%
30	23%	22%	21%
16	9%	9%	7%

See figure 1

Data for figure 2: Disability profile between 2020 and 2022

Disability	2020	2021	2022
Not disabled	84%	83%	83%
Disabled	6%	8%	8%
Unknown/undeclared	10%	10%	8%

See figure 2

Data for figure 3: Self-reported overall mental health in the Civil Service People Survey 2021 and 2020

Self-reported mental health	CSPS 2022	CSPS 2021
Excellent	12%	11%
Very good	30%	30%
Good	32%	29%
Fair	21%	23%
Poor	5%	6%

See figure 3

Data for figure 4: Gender profile between 2020 and 2022

Gender	2020	2021	2022
Female	67%	67%	67%
Male	33%	33%	33%

See figure 4

Data for figure 5: Sexual orientation profile between 2020 and 2022

Sexual orientation	2020	2021	2022
Heterosexual	80%	80%	82%
LGB/other	6%	7%	7%
Unknown/undeclared	14%	12%	11%

See figure 5

1. Equality objective 4 in the Ofsted Equality Objectives 2023–2027 sets out the action we will take to increase the number of staff who are from minority groups that are currently under-represented in Ofsted’s workforce. ↩