We read every inspection report! Here is what actually separates a Strong club from an Expected one.
397 inspections, four judgements, and five things you can focus on in your setting.
Since the new inspection framework came in November 2025, out of school and wraparound providers have been asking the same question: what does Strong actually look like, and how far is it from where we are?
We decided to answer it properly. We read all 397 published inspections of school-age childcare in England between 10 November 2025 and 9 June 2026, coded every report the same way, and compared the settings graded Strong with those graded Expected, judgement by judgement.
The first thing worth saying is the good news. 361 of the 397 settings met every statutory requirement and were graded Expected standard or better in every area. That is 91%. And Expected is not the bare pass the word suggests: settings graded Expected across all four areas had, on average, fourteen separate strengths recorded in their reports.
Expected is not a bare pass. It is many things done well, and nine in ten of us are there or above already.
Leadership is not judged on what you say about it
The clearest finding in the whole analysis is about leadership, and it surprised us. Inspectors are not grading leadership on your self-evaluation, your policies or your improvement plan. They are grading it on what everything else looks like: how children behave, how settled they are, how much they do for themselves, and how well individual needs are met.
In settings graded Strong for inclusion, leadership is affirmed in 95% of reports against 78% at Expected. It is the largest gap of any of the four areas. You cannot present strong leadership separately from strong provision, because the provision is the evidence of the leadership in practice.
Five things that show up again and again
Seventy-five settings were graded Strong or better in all four areas. Set against the settings graded Expected throughout, five things recur. None of them requires more staff or more money.
- Design your transitions. Managed transitions appear in 48% of settings graded Strong for leadership against 30% at Expected. Collection from class, arrival, the shift between activities, settling a new starter, handover home. In the strongest settings these are planned, with someone accountable for each. In Expected settings they simply happen. For wraparound provision this matters more than for anyone else, because transition is what our day is made of.
- Let children do more for themselves. Independence appears in 83% of settings graded Strong for behaviour against 70% at Expected, and 87% of settings Strong across all four. This is the single largest difference in the behaviour judgement, and it is not a behaviour strategy in the traditional sense. A child who is absorbed, trusted and occupied has less reason to be anything else.
- Let them take on challenge. Children taking appropriate risks and meeting challenge in their play appears in 32% of Strong-graded behaviour settings against 19% at Expected. The toolkit names this directly. Prompting a child to consider whether something is safe, rather than removing the hazard, is the difference between a child who is safe in the moment and one who can keep themselves safe long term.
- Know your children individually. Nine of the ten settings graded below standard for inclusion had the same single finding: a need that was not identified, or not supported once it was. Identification comes first, and it costs nothing but attention. Inclusion is actually where our sector is at its best, but that doesn’t mean we should take our eye off the ball.
- Aim your training at something specific. Staff development is the single most common next step across all 397 settings, appearing in around one report in five. Almost every setting trains its team, so training itself is not what separates anyone. The toolkit is explicit on this: a broad programme of professional learning that is overly generic, or not targeted at improving practice, counts against a setting. The question is not whether your staff are trained, but whether your next training is aimed at a weakness you have actually identified.
What to do on Monday
If you want one place to start, pick the one your setting will feel the most - what will have the most impact.
Walk your session from a child's arrival to their collection and count the waits. Then take the longest one and decide who owns it.
Or, take a single policy, ask two members of staff what it requires, and compare their answers with the document. In the settings graded below standard, the failing was rarely a missing policy; it was a policy that existed and was not being understood and delivered in practice.
Or, name the two or three children who find your setting hardest, and ask what is different for them now compared with six months ago. If you can answer that, you have the evidence inspectors are looking for.
Read the full analysis
We have published the whole thing: an overview report, and four briefing sheets, one for each judgement. Each sheet sets out what the toolkit actually asks for, what separates Strong from Expected in that area, what settings graded Expected are typically asked to work on, and quotations from the strongest settings showing exactly how they did it.
Download them here
It is free, it is written for our sector specifically, and as far as we know nobody else has done it.