• Find an inspection report
• Understanding a school inspection report
• Types of schools Ofsted inspects
• Inspecting schools
  • Inspecting maintained schools
  • Inspecting independent schools
  • Inspecting boarding and residential special schools
  • Inspecting initial teacher education
• About our survey reports
• Statistics for schools
• How to complain

Inspecting boarding and residential special schools

This page tells you what happens before, during and after an inspection of a boarding or residential special school.

We inspect the boarding provision in maintained boarding schools and independent boarding schools which are not members of associations affiliated to the Independent Schools Council, once every three years. In independent, maintained and non-maintained residential special schools, we conduct an annual inspection of the residential provision.

Where the inspection of the school’s education provision and the residential inspection are both due at the same time, they are usually combined into an integrated inspection of the whole school. For further information, go to the schools' Inspecting boarding and residential provision page.

Point in time surveys for parents, carers, boarders and staff

Once a year we ask boarding and residential special schools to invite their boarders or residential pupils and their parents or carers, and boarding staff to fill in our point in time surveys, so they can tell inspectors what they think about the school’s boarding provision.

The surveys are voluntary and contain ten questions about the school’s boarding provision. We send a summary of all the responses to the surveys to the school, but the completed surveys are confidential to the inspectors.

Before an inspection

The lead inspector tells the headteacher that your children’s school will be inspected two days before the Ofsted team arrives if the school is due to receive an integrated inspection of the education and boarding provision. When the boarding provision only is being inspected there will be no notice. For these inspections, the lead inspector will contact the school on the morning of the inspection to tell the school that the inspection will start later that day, at around 12 o’clock.

The inspection usually lasts three days and the inspectors will be in the boarding or residential provision one or two evenings.

During an inspection

To find out about the boarding or residential provision, and the rest of the school, the inspector will:

• listen and talk to boarders or residential pupils and staff
• sample meals and observe mealtime and boarding routines
• look at the school’s paperwork and records
• review what parents, carers, staff and boarders have said
• inspect the boarding or residential accommodation
• watch lessons to see how teachers are teaching and what pupils are learning, if it is an integrated inspection.

After an inspection

The lead inspector writes an inspection report to tell people all about the school’s boarding or residential provision including giving a grade; inspectors grade to show how the school is doing overall. The grades are:

• grade 1 (outstanding)
• grade 2 (good)
• grade 3 (satisfactory)
• grade 4 (inadequate)

At the end of the report will be a letter to the boarders or residential pupils that will tell them what the inspectors found out about their school.

The school is sent the inspection report. The school then has a week to send a copy of the report to all parents and carers.

After that, Ofsted publishes the report on this website.