This article is a summary of a webinar with Cognassist’s CEO Chris Quickfall joining SDN Mesma’s Director & Co-Founder Lou Doyle where they discussed the initial wave of Ofsted reports under the new 2025 toolkit. You can catch up on the webinar on-demand here.

The revised Education Inspection Framework has produced its first wave of Further Education and Skills reports. Early patterns are starting to emerge — and across a session hosted this week by SDN Mesma, with Mesma’s Director Louise Doyle and Cognassist CEO Chris Quickfall, a number of them came into sharp focus.

This post pulls those patterns together, sets them against the SEND policy trajectory, and draws out what we think providers need to be building now.

The data is telling us leadership and inclusion are one judgement

Of the 127 FE and Skills reports published between November and March, the standout finding is the relationship between leadership and inclusion. The two grades match in 87% of reports.

For Independent Training Providers the correlation is absolute. Every ITP graded strong on inclusion is also graded strong on leadership. Every ITP graded “needs attention” on leadership carries the same grade on inclusion. There is no daylight between the two.

The narrative in those reports is being dominated by SEND and by English and maths. Intersectional disadvantage — where learners sit across multiple categories of need at once — is currently under-represented in the inspection language, but it is almost certainly where the next wave of expectation will land.

A second finding is harder still to look away from. A gap in staff training is referenced in 100% of reports graded “needs attention,” and in 70% of ITP reports regardless of grade. The question is no longer whether training matters to the inspection outcome. It clearly does. The question is what kind of training, for whom, and aimed at which decisions on the ground.

The implication is that inclusion is no longer being read as a practitioner-level pocket of provision inspected in isolation. It is being read as a direct signal of leadership capability.

The direction of travel — why this is just the audit stage

That shift is not an accident, and it is not where the story ends.

Policy change of this kind tends to follow a recognisable four-stage pattern. Government first incentivises the behaviours it wants to see. It then uses existing authorities to mandate them. It stands up an audit function to check they are happening. And finally, it codifies legal liability onto institutions themselves.

Viewed against that pattern, SEND in post-16 education has already moved a long way. Funding incentives were introduced in 2012. EHCPs followed in 2014. The SEND Code of Practice arrived in 2015. Apprenticeship funding rules were updated in 2023 to mandate learning needs assessment at onboarding. And now, through the revised inspection toolkit, we are firmly in the audit stage.

The SEND reform white paper published in February signals what comes next. Responsibility for supporting learners with significant but non-complex needs is set to shift further onto institutions, with EHCP access tightening and a widening “targeted plus” tier sitting under provider-led delivery. This gradual transfer of obligation — what Chris described in the session as salami slicing — is how these transitions have historically played out. Each consultation cycle nudges a little more weight from the public purse onto the provider.

Worth noting: the Assess–Plan–Do–Review cycle is not an Ofsted invention. It is named in paragraph 6.44 of the SEND Code of Practice and has been the organising logic of graduated support since 2015. What has changed is that it is now being inspected against — and before long, legislated around.

What providers need to build — before the next stage lands

If that is the trajectory, then the question for leaders is a practical one: what has to be in place to operate at the scale this framework is asking for? Four things stand out.

  • Systematise the inclusion process. The work of identifying needs, planning adjustments, delivering them, and reviewing impact cannot run through an Additional Learning Support team alone. It needs to exist as whole-provider infrastructure, not as a specialist pocket of activity.

  • Build a triage model that equips non-specialists. Subject tutors and skills coaches need to deliver reasonable adjustments as part of normal practice, with a clear escalation path to specialists where that isn’t enough. As Chris put it in the session, the age of defaulting to specialists is gone — the only way to scale inclusion is to make every member of staff part of its delivery.

  • Capture evidence at every touchpoint. The inspection conversation now begins before inspectors arrive on site, through the planning call. Leaders need structural visibility of what is happening across the provider — not case-by-case anecdote gathered in the fortnight before a visit.

  • Invest in training with precision, not breadth. The data makes clear that training is being inspected against. A blanket CPD roll-out will produce compliance, not capability. The starting question should be training for what, and for whom .

And sitting underneath all four, a phrase Lou returned to in the session, and one worth embedding in how provider strategy is framed: what you do for learners experiencing disadvantage benefits every learner in the room .

Where this leaves us

The providers likely to hold up well under the revised framework are those treating inclusion as whole-provider infrastructure — not as a practitioner specialism, an ALS function, or a compliance exercise.

The data from the first 127 reports suggests the grading system is already reading it that way. The policy trajectory suggests that reading is about to be reinforced in law.

Cognassist was built to operationalise the APDR cycle across whole providers, giving leaders, tutors, and support teams a single view of how inclusion is being identified, planned, delivered, reviewed, and evidenced. We’ll be continuing to publish findings from the Inclusion Index in the coming months. If it would be useful to see the platform in the context of your own provision, get in touch — we’re making a limited number of early-access licences available to providers who want to work through this with us.