Guidance

Risk assessment methodology for further education and skills providers

The method used by Ofsted to assess when to inspect further education and skills providers rated good or outstanding.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

Ofsted uses statistical models to make sure that we are allocating our inspection resources where they are needed most. This is known as our risk assessment process. We look at published data about each provider together with a wide range of information to give us a selection of providers that we will inspect that year.

This process is not used to pre-judge inspection outcomes; inspectors do not have access to the risk assessments when they are inspecting providers.

You can find out more about our approach in the further education and skills inspection handbook.

You can also read a blog about our approach to risk assessing good and outstanding schools.

Updates to this page

Published 27 September 2019
Last updated 4 October 2022 + show all updates
  1. Change to stage 1 of the risk assessment methodology. Removal of English and mathematics GCSE and functional skills data from the analysis of published and non-published performance data.

  2. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page