What is the SEF?

The school’s self-evaluation form (SEF) is the most crucial piece of evidence available to the inspection team. The SEF serves as the main document when planning the inspection with the school and is vital in evaluating the quality of leadership and management and the school’s capacity to improve. Ofsted believes that schools are best placed to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses. The SEF asks schools to:

• evaluate their progress
• set out the main evidence on which this evaluation is based
• identify strengths and weaknesses
• explain the action the school is taking to remedy the weaknesses and develop the strengths.

It is important to note that rather than a prompt to start an evaluation of the school, the school self-evaluation form should be seen as a summary of the internal self-evaluation which the school is already conducting. The current inspection arrangements put more onus on the school to be proactive and demonstrate to inspectors that it can not only diagnose where its strengths and weaknesses are, but more crucially, can do something about improving and rectifying them.

The school relies on each subject department to help here – for example, the head of Art & Design should be able to provide an accurate and current evaluation of the department, to contribute to the overall school self-evaluation. In institutional inspections, inspectors will view the quality and use made of school self-evaluation as a good indication of the calibre of management. The SEF is therefore important not only to the SMT, but also to middle managers, including heads of department. Evidence of how effectively schools undertake self-evaluation and the use they make of it helps inspectors to assess the effectiveness of the school.

Note that part of the aim of a subject/survey inspection is to enable the school to say what it thinks about a subject/topic and to seek further guidance from the inspector about it. Such visits include a discussion of the school’s own evaluation of the subject being inspected.

Your school’s Ofsted self-evaluation form will be completed online. It is accessible from the Ofsted Web site, although it is restricted through a secure password system (Ofsted sends your password details to your school). Blank copies of the forms are also available here – click on ‘Demonstration site’ in the left-hand menu:

	Ofsted: Self-evaluation form