Adaptive Teaching and the EIF: What Inspectors Expect to See
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Adaptive teaching sits at the heart of the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF), reflecting a renewed emphasis on how well schools meet the needs of all pupils within ambitious, inclusive classroom practice. Under the EIF, inspectors are not looking for labels or bolt-on interventions as indicators of quality; instead, they focus on how effectively teachers adapt their teaching in real time so that pupils with different starting points, needs and barriers can access, engage with and succeed in the same curriculum.

High-Quality Teaching as the Strongest Lever for Improvement

The framework makes clear that high-quality teaching is the strongest lever for improving outcomes, particularly for pupils with SEND and those who are disadvantaged. As set out by Ofsted, adaptive teaching is about “teachers knowing their pupils well and adjusting teaching design, pace and support accordingly,” rather than lowering expectations or creating separate pathways. This means carefully chosen scaffolding, targeted questioning, modelling, retrieval practice and feedback, all used flexibly to support learning without diluting curriculum ambition.

What Inspectors Look for During Conversations

Within inspection conversations, leaders and teachers are expected to articulate not just what adaptations are in place, but why they are used and how they are making a difference. Inspectors will look for coherence: alignment between curriculum intent, classroom practice and what pupils can actually do and remember over time. They will also consider how well staff understand pupils’ needs, including SEND, and how consistently adaptive strategies are applied across subjects and phases.

Adaptive Teaching as a Core Professional Skill

Importantly, the EIF positions adaptive teaching as a core professional skill for all teachers, not a specialist add-on. Schools that embed adaptive teaching successfully tend to demonstrate strong subject knowledge, clear curriculum sequencing and a shared understanding of effective strategies. In this context, adaptive teaching is not about doing more but about doing the right things deliberately and consistently so that every pupil is supported to achieve ambitious outcomes.

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Understanding the Evolving Role of the IDSR Under the 2025 Ofsted Framework

From November 2025, under the refreshed Ofsted inspection regime, the role of the Inspection Data Summary Report (IDSR) becomes more clearly defined and crucial to self-evaluation and inspection preparation. The IDSR “summarises and analyses the data … that is available about a school” and “is designed to be used alongside our school inspection toolkit, to guide inspectors’ conversations with school leaders.” It is not a final verdict on a school - “it is not meant to provide a complete picture of a school or any judgement or assessment of a school.”

A New Inspection Model and the Growing Importance of Context

As part of the Education Inspection Framework (EIF) introduced in November 2025, inspections now use report cards rather than traditional single-word overall judgements, with evaluation spread across a wider range of areas. This shift means that data context, trends over time, pupil-group breakdowns and destination outcomes carry greater weight. According to the updated guidance, inspectors will use the IDSR as starting-point evidence but “inspectors will want to see first-hand evidence of the quality of education that pupils experience and to understand how well leaders know what it is like to be a pupil at the school.”

What’s New in the November 2025 IDSR Release

Following the most recent release of the IDSR on 4 November 2025, the report now includes “provisional key stage 2 data, spring school census data, provisional phonics data, final exclusions data and 1-term absence data.” This underlines the need for school leaders to interrogate not only attainment and progression data, but also attendance, absence, exclusions and other contextual information when interpreting their school’s current position.

What This Means for School Leaders

In practice, this means school leaders must be prepared to explain, with clarity and honesty, what the data shows, what it does not, and what actions they have taken (or plan to take). Improvement priorities should be grounded in evidence, with measurable success criteria; self-evaluation should align with the data; and governors must be able to ask challenging, informed questions about performance. Schools need to communicate performance in a more nuanced way, emphasising transparency, evidence and continuous improvement.