Becoming a registered school?
How hard is it to register? What are the pitfalls?
Registering as an Independent School.
What are the pitfalls? How hard is it?
I often hear about Non-school Alternative provisions being encouraged to register with the DfE. There is a general sentiment from LA’s, Schools and, I think, even coming through the new Ofsted framework that unregistered AP is a second choice and the best thing is for young people to be accessing registered provision. Driven by this a lot of non-school AP leaders look at registering and the benefits it can bring - after all – how hard can it be?
Well, after picking up some feedback from settings who had recently experienced some challenging pre-registration inspections I thought it was worth looking in more detail at recent inspections. I want to help settings make an informed decision.
How hard is it to register?
What are the most regular pitfalls?
What can we learn to make registration more likely to be successful?
How hard is it to register?
The first point is - registration is not easy and is, potentially, getting harder. Any AP setting that wants to become registered must do so through becoming an independent school with the DfE. To register successfully as an independent school and to become a registered provision you must pass an Ofsted inspection against the Independent School Standards. This isn’t a developmental process, each one must be met and what is expected for each isn’t always clear. You fail one and you fail the inspection. In reality none of the reports I’ve ever seen have only failed on one aspect, I think the least is about 4 and some fail more than 20.
Year Pre-reg inspections Pass rate
2022/23 134 73%
2023/24 116 73%
2024/25 144 70%
The long-term figures of success in these ‘pre-registration inspections’ is that around two-thirds of them will result in a recommendation to the DfE that the setting is likely to make the standard. Each year some of that two-thirds success bracket will be settings on their second or third pre-reg visit.
What do failed inspection reports tell us?
To look at things in more detail I took all the pre-reg inspections in the last 6 months. There have been an increase in independent school applications in recent years and there were 81 pre-reg inspections listed on the Ofsted website since June 2025. 31 of these resulted in a failure to meet the ISS. A pass rate of 62%. That’s lower than average, it may suggest that these applications are getting harder though it’s only a small sample group. The standards haven’t changed so I suspect there is more to it than harder inspections. The numbers of inspections have risen and most in this group were schools set up to cater for young people with SEMH needs or Autism. I suspect some of the increase in the number of failures is down to the added complexities of catering for a specialist area of education.
What was really telling about the challenge ahead of those choosing to register was that lots of the successful applications since June were from settings who were on their second or even third pre-reg inspection. In the last 6 months only just less than 50% of settings passed their inspection first time.
There’s a quote that says ‘failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker’ - even better if that failure is someone else’s and we learn from that! So, what can we learn from these recent inspections. What are common pitfalls and how can we make sure we don’t make them?
I read through all the inspection reports for settings that failed to pass their pre-reg inspection and there were a couple of themes to pull out overall:
1) Don’t try it on your own. The percentage of settings passing who were part of a chain or group was 84%. This reduced to 57% for settings working as a single entity. Of course, it makes sense, if you’ve already seen a school through registration it means you’ve got all the expertise and experience to take into the next one. You may not have this luxury so mitigate the risk by talking to others or working with organisation like us who do have experience of the process and the standards you need to meet to be successful.
2) Don’t apply until you’re ready. There were a couple of reports that read like the inspection had been an absolute car-crash. Multiple standards weren’t met and the impression was that the inspection fell far too early in the settings preparation in terms of staffing, planning and premises. Once the paperwork is in I’ve had a couple of settings we’ve been working with recently who have been inspected within two weeks. Don’t presume you’ll have a long lead-in time. There were also a couple of inspections that just failed in one aspect around building work not being completed – that must be really frustrating when everything else passes. Make sure everything is ready before you apply – having to run through the whole inspection process twice will take much longer in the long run.
Lessons for each standard.
More specifically then – what are the lessons from failure around the different standards themselves? Well, most problems arise with sections 1,3 and 5. The quality of education provided, the welfare, health and safety of pupils and the premises and accommodation of the school. Each of these had at least double the number of failures of any other area.
Where did settings fail?
The most common lessons from each area were:
1) Quality of education provided
· Several settings failed around the detail of planning and schemes of work for their curriculum. Planning needs to be in place for all the subjects in a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum (English, Maths, Science, Humanities, Technology, Arts, PE and PSHE) and this needs to be in place for every year group. Sometimes settings had missed a subject or missed a year group in terms of planning.
· The planning needs to be adapted for the needs and aptitudes of your students, particularly if you are professing to cater for a particular need then the curriculum must be tailored around that. Differentiating on an individual basis when you see a pupils needs isn’t enough to pass. Build flexibility into your curriculum rather than a set approach for a set age group.
· Have a strong reading strategy particularly around those students who may be early readers. Make sure staff are trained and supported to deliver this.
· Have a sex and relationships policy that matches recent DfE guidance, publish this on your website.
· Evaluate the experience and expertise of your staff and their ability to deliver your curriculum effectively. Plan around your weaknesses through training, recruitment or external support.
2) Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils
· This was a successful area in general. Do make sure you have some agreement and training from staff around understanding not sharing politically partisan views. Potentially include this in staff induction plans, your staff code of conduct and get staff to sign to say they agree.
· Make teaching around protected characteristics explicit. Don’t rely on an implicit understanding that this will be covered. Flag up where it happens and plan some clear sessions to deliver teaching around this area.
3) Welfare, health and safety of pupils
· Make sure you have a risk assessment policy in place as well as the risk assessments themselves. Make sure risk assessments are thorough, detailed and cover every aspect of school life. Risk assessments tended to be missing in outside area use, off-site PE use or key on-site risks. It is ok to have a premises with some public access or a nearby main road – you just need to make sure any risk is recognised and really well mitigated.
· Know how you will track attendance. Make sure you are clear on attendance codes and have a system for tracking them and attendance trends.
· Low walls and fences around schools were mentioned several times. It isn’t the presence of a low wall or fence that is the problem, it is the recognition of the risk involved and the things you’ve done to mitigate this. Of course though, it is easier to stop pupil access to danger and reduce the possibility of absconding with a good standard of fencing.
· You should have had a water and fire risk assessment recently. Both could throw up some actions to take to improve safety in these areas and these actions should have been followed. There were a surprising amount of settings without fire or first aid equipment, signage or training.
4) Suitability of staff, supply staff and proprietors
· The most common missing staff checks were Prohibition to teaching and Section 128 checks. You can’t automatically get a prohibition check unless you have a DfE number (which you don’t get until you’re registered as a school) you can request a check by emailing this address: tra.prohibition@education.gov.uk you can get a section 128 check through an enhanced dbs. Just check your DBS service covers this.
· You need everyone checked and on your SCR, this includes staff, trustees or governors and proprietors. The most common people to be missing safer recruitment checks were proprietors especially having to have references in place.
5) Premises of and accommodation at school
Most of the premises issues seem to have come up around key areas that often cause problems when converting a building into a school – outside area, medical room and plumbing.
· There were some key areas that kept coming up in terms of premises failures: Hot water taps must be at 42 degrees celsius (or lower) and you should have external lighting around entrance and exit points.
· If you’re using an external destination for PE then make sure that you have a written agreement for the use and a thorough risk assessment.
· Medical rooms were often unsuitable or had no washing facilities. An easy solution for washing facilities if there is no plumbing is a portable sink. They have a reservoir of water and can be moved around easily saving you the costly job of adding plumbing to a room.
· Make sure the outdoor area is safe, thoroughly risk assessed and well-maintained.
6) Provision of information
· It’s not a requirement but, given how easy it makes it to share information publicly it is surprising how many settings don’t have a website.
· There is a requirement in the standards to outline SEND provision and also provision for EAL students. This was often missing from school websites.
7) Manner in which complaints are handled
· This section was very rarely a problem. The only repeated issue was outlining that a panel member must be independent of the setting during the final stage of a formal complaint.
8) Quality of leadership and management of school
· Any inspection that had a failure point in sections 1-7 then talked about this area being likely not to meet standards.
· One regular criticism was a lack of understanding of the independent school standards by the proprietor. This was often where a simple standard had been missed (hot water, external lighting, EAL policy etc). It is important to know the standards inside out and to be able to talk fluently about them on inspection day.
· There is a weakness where the headteacher is also the proprietor and DSL. This is tempting in a small staff team but it is important you build in some options in terms of complaints or allegations being able to go to someone else. Think about where a complaint about your head would go? Some heads were DSLs, proprietors and head of governors. Your team should have some outside accountability built in.
At Close the Gaps one thing we do is to work with organisations setting up schools from scratch or moving from non-school APs to a registered provision. We can help you decide if that is best for your organisation, and work to support you if it is. Our current support for providers runs from regular drop-in sessions and simple checklists through to full audits, action planning and Ofsted conversation coaching. If you feel like you could do with that kind of support and preparation then do get in contact.
If you’d like a copy of our Independent School Standards Checklist to help you self-audit where you are then we’ll swap it for your email here.
