Ofsted is piloting an independent route for schools in England to challenge how the inspectorate handled their complaints, including complaints about inspection grades. It is the first scheme that lets a body outside Ofsted question the outcome of school inspection complaints, not only how they were handled. The Independent Complaints Review (ICR) service was announced on 16 October 2026 and covers state-funded schools inspected during the 2026-27 academic year. FE Week reported that chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver announced it at the Confederation of School Trusts conference.
Writing in Schools Week on the same day, Oliver said the time-limited pilot starts this month. FE Week reported that it also takes in complaints about school inspections that are already under way this term. The published material does not name the organisation that will carry out the reviews or give the cost of the service.
How the review works
Schools can turn to the ICR only after Ofsted’s own complaints process has finished and their inspection report card has been published, Schools Week reported. At the internal stage, publication of the report card is paused while an inspector from another region investigates, and the findings are signed off by senior inspectors, Oliver wrote.
The existing Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted (ICASO) can check only whether a complaint was handled properly. For the first time, the ICR can also consider whether the outcome was fair and reasonable, including where the complaint concerned the inspection process and findings. It can see the full inspection evidence base and the investigator’s internal complaint record, and it reports to both the complainant and the chief inspector.
The ICR can recommend that the chief inspector look again at a decision, including a grade. In law only the chief inspector can make grading decisions, so the reviewer cannot change a grade itself. Where a recommendation concerns grading, the chief inspector can set aside the published report card and arrange a new inspection, which could produce the same or different grades, according to FE Week. FE Week also reported that the reviewing organisation must be a full member of the Ombudsman Association.
Where school inspection complaints go today
The pilot sits on top of a complaints system that has been rebuilt since 2024. School inspection complaints now start with a provider helpline, which lets a head or principal raise concerns with a senior inspector while an inspection is still running. A national hub handles formal complaints centrally, an inspector from a different region investigates, and panels that include education union and sector representatives scrutinise a sample of closed cases. Oliver set out those changes in Ofsted’s September 2024 response to the Gilbert review and restated them in his conference speech.
Beyond Ofsted sits ICASO, which the ICR will run alongside. A contract award notice published on the government’s Find a Tender service on 2 October 2025 shows the Department for Education awarded the current ICASO contract to CEDR Services Limited for £124,500 excluding VAT, running from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2028 with an option to extend by 12 months. The notice requires the service to report regularly on the volume and nature of the complaints it receives, to publish an annual report, and to stay independent of both Ofsted and the department. Most school inspection complaints that reach ICASO end with a judgement on process alone, which is the gap the new service is meant to close.
Who is covered and why now
The pilot is limited to state-funded schools. Oliver wrote that Ofsted may extend the service to early years and to further education and skills providers if it is made permanent, after an evaluation that includes discussions with education unions. No timetable was given. FE Week reported that colleges and independent training providers are excluded for now.
The move follows Dame Christine Gilbert’s independent review of Ofsted in September 2024, which called for an element of independent external oversight of complaints with the power to reopen inspection judgements, Schools Week reported. In a letter of 24 July 2026 to Helen Hayes MP, chair of the Education Select Committee, Oliver said Ofsted’s board had approved changes to the complaints process and that a pilot for 2026-27 would soon be announced. The same letter said Ofsted’s provider helpline had received 555 calls about schools, relating to 463 inspections, between its launch and 28 May 2026, a period in which Ofsted carried out 8,224 state-funded school inspections.
According to Schools Week, 220 schools complained in 2025-26 (April 2025 to March 2026), about 5% of 4,640 inspections, and 67 of those complaints (30%) were at least partly upheld. NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said it did not deal with problems in the inspection framework itself, and ASCL general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio said it would not explain why so many schools feel they must complain, Schools Week reported. The paper added that NAHT, ASCL and the National Education Union had each passed votes of no confidence in Oliver’s leadership in the previous week.
From the Gilbert review to the pilot
The wording of the Gilbert review matters because the pilot answers it almost directly. Dame Christine Gilbert’s independent learning review, published on 3 September 2024, said Ofsted “should continue to improve its complaints procedure”, with “a focus on embedding an element of independent external oversight with the power to re-open inspection judgements”, according to Ofsted’s published response.
That response, issued the same month, listed the complaints hub, the helpline, earlier access to ICASO and the complaints panels, but it did not address the power to reopen judgements. The ICR pilot is the first of Ofsted’s complaints measures to answer that part of the recommendation, although the power to order a fresh inspection stays with the chief inspector rather than the reviewer. Ofsted’s announcement also cites Sinead McBrearty’s independent wellbeing impact assessment of the revised inspection framework as a prompt for the pilot.
What Ofsted says happens next
Ofsted’s announcement describes the arrangements as subject to contract, with the Department for Education managing the award of the contract for the reviewing organisation. The chief inspector must personally consider and respond to every recommendation the reviewer makes. “As far as we know, no other inspectorate in the world does this,” Oliver told the Confederation of School Trusts conference in Birmingham on 16 October, adding that a reviewer’s recommendation on grading “would carry a great deal of weight with me”.
The pilot will be monitored and evaluated through 2026-27, and Ofsted will seek feedback from complainants, trade unions and the Confederation of School Trusts before deciding whether to make the service permanent and extend it to the other remits it inspects. For schools weighing a challenge this term, the practical change is that school inspection complaints that exhaust Ofsted’s internal process now have a second route, and one that can question the outcome itself.
What it means
TED analysis: three readings for school groups, colleges and suppliers.
- Academy trusts: the ICR gives trusts a route that can lead to a fresh inspection, but only after a report card is public. A trust disputing a grade still carries the published result while the review runs, and none of the published material gives a timescale for the independent stage.
- Colleges and training providers: further education and skills providers stay with ICASO, which cannot look at whether an outcome was fair. Any extension depends on an evaluation with no published timetable, so for providers inspected in 2026-27 the existing route is the only one available.
- Suppliers: the reviewing body and the contract value are undisclosed. Who wins that work, and how many recommendations to reopen grades the pilot produces, will show whether the service changes outcomes or mainly changes process. The ICASO award suggests the scale: the current adjudication contract is worth £124,500 over three years.
