Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. We inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages.

Every week, we carry out hundreds of inspections and regulatory visits throughout England and publish the results online. We help providers that are not yet of good standard to improve, monitor their progress and share with them the best practice we find.

Our goal is to achieve excellence in education and skills for learners of all ages, and in the care of children and young people.

We report directly to Parliament and we are independent and impartial.

We have around 1,500 employees across our 8 regions:

• East Midlands
• East of England
• North East, Yorkshire and Humber
• North West
• South East
• South West
• West Midlands
• London

We also directly contract with more than 1,500 Ofsted Inspectors to carry out inspections of schools and further education and skills provision.

We’re responsible for:

• inspecting maintained schools and academies, some independent schools, and many other educational institutions and programmes outside of higher education
• inspecting childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training
• publishing reports of our findings so they can be used to improve the overall quality of education and training
• regulating a range of early years and children’s social care services, making sure they’re suitable for children and potentially vulnerable young people
• reporting to policymakers on the effectiveness of these services

• develop our 2016 to 2020 strategic plan to continue to raise standards and improve lives
• implement more proportionate inspection including shorter but more regular inspections from September 2015 for good schools and further education providers
• contract directly with Ofsted Inspectors for education and further education and skills from September 2015, rather than through third party suppliers
• consider resourcing options for delivery of early years inspections when the existing outsourced contracts conclude in March 2017
• further develop the integrated inspection model for children’s services
• identify and report on issues of concern in the sectors we inspect, including those that impact providers’ ability to be good and outcomes for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable
• further develop the capacity and capability of our regional teams
• develop and implement a communications and engagement strategy to continue to improve engagement with our stakeholders