Boarding school inspections

All boarding schools in the UK, state or independent, undergo some form of inspection of their boarding facilities, prioritising outcomes for children and young people and focusing on other key areas such as premises, facilities, policies and procedures.

England

From September 2023 all boarding schools in membership of one of the five independent school associations (GSA, HMC, IAPS, ISA, Society of Heads) will be inspected every three years by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) under a new framework called Framework 23, to be published in Spring 2023.

Boarding inspection is carried out by a specialist team of boarding inspectors from the ISI. Inspection of boarding takes place alongside the inspection of education provision. The new framework is to be published on the ISI website, along with all current and future school inspection reports for each provider. ISI categorises provision as either excellent, good, sound or unsatisfactory.

State boarding providers and all independent providers who are not members of one of the associations listed above have their boarding inspected by Ofsted, using Ofsted’s Social Care Common Inspection Framework (SCCIF). Boarding is inspected by a team of specialist social care inspectors. The boarding inspection may be standalone or it may be aligned with the inspection of education provision by the relevant Ofsted team. Provision is judged to be outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate. A small number of independent boarding schools are classified as special schools and these have an annual social care inspection. Ofsted reports are publicly available