Ofsted has defended against criticism of its new inspection framework and confirmed it will not be making any major changes to the toolkits in its upcoming update.

Lee Owston, Ofsted’s national director for education, said it was a “misconception” that schools working below the national average for outcomes will get a “needs attention” grade.

Tes revealed earlier this year that schools with high intakes of children on free school meals are more than three times more likely than affluent schools to get a lower grade on the “achievement” evaluation area.

“There’s a concern that we are not taking context into account, and a misconception that these schools are being compared bluntly to national averages. As I’ve said before, and I’ll say again today, that’s not true,” Mr Owston said in a speech at the Schools and Academies Show in London today.

No new standards in updated framework

The school watchdog launched its latest education inspection framework in November, which judges schools on six different evaluation areas across a five-point scale.

However, while the framework has prompted concerns, particularly around the impact of its evaluation areas and inspection toolkits, Mr Owston said there would be no major changes when it is reviewed in June.

“We’re not changing the standards,” he said. “We’re not introducing new standards... it is essentially about learning everything that we have over the last six months, and we will continue to learn and clarify where people have asked us multiple questions.”

Ofsted’s annual framework update will also be reviewed to reflect government policy, including the Department for Education’s unreleased enrichment benchmarks.

Ofsted report cards ‘accurate’

While the “expected standard” grade refers to being “typically in line with national averages”, Mr Owston said this does not mean that “schools that are one percentage point below the national average are going to automatically be graded as ‘needs attention’”.

“Ofsted recognises that pupils have different starting points, and we’re looking for them to progress from there,” he said.

Instead, Mr Owston said that the achievement grade is just “one part of the national picture”, and that Ofsted’s report cards are “accurate” in showing improvement.

“I think our report cards are accurate in telling the picture of where individual schools are in their journey of improvement, and some schools will genuinely have further to travel in terms of where they want to take their pupils, in terms of their outcomes, than others,” he told delegates.

Attendance and behaviour grade not separated

Mr Owston also acknowledged concerns with Ofsted’s decision to combine the attendance and behaviour evaluation areas, as first reported by Tes.

Heads warned that this posed a risk of schools’ work on behaviour not being reflected in the overall grade, as a result of wider challenges with attendance.

Mr Owston defended combining the two areas, saying that “poor attendance, like poor behaviour, is also disruptive” and confirmed that there are no plans to separate out the grade.

However, he announced that Ofsted will add subheadings beneath the grade to make the distinction “clearer”.

‘Don’t match leaders with inspectors’

The Ofsted chief also used his speech to remind schools of certain trends observed in inspections so far.

He said that some leaders were matching the number of available leaders on inspection days to the number of inspectors who arrived at the school.

“We’re not asking you to pull leaders out of classrooms to be with inspectors - that goes against what we want to see,” he added.

Mr Owston also told leaders that the self-evaluation aspect of inspection, which schools are expected to give at the beginning of the visit, should not be too onerous.

“It’s the process of knowing about your school,” he said. “It’s not a detailed document that inspectors need to specifically consider... it doesn’t need to be written down specifically for inspection.”