Inspection information for initial teacher education (ITE): for use from January 2026

Updated 10 September 2025

This guidance contains information about our inspections of initial teacher education (ITE) for a general audience.

It does not explain how inspectors carry out full inspections, which is in our separate operating guide for ITE inspections. The operating guide sets out what inspectors do on inspection, who we engage with and how, and how we feed back to leaders and report our findings. This page also does not contain the standards inspectors use to evaluate provision. Those standards, along with guidance on applying them across different phases and provider types, are in our toolkit for ITE providers.

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