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Policy paper
Government response to
the national workload action
group report
Published 25 September 2025
Applies to England
  
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Child and family social work Government response to the national workload action group report
Department 
for Education
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In January 2023, the national workload action group
(NWAG) was established to:
find the main causes of unnecessary social work workload
develop practical, evidence-based solutions
The insights and experiences of frontline social workers and
colleagues from across the sector shaped the group’s findings.
The report provides a clear analysis of the complex challenges
surrounding social work workload. It offers a comprehensive set
of recommendations to inform the Department for Education’s
(DfE) ongoing reforms in children’s social care, including
reforms delivered through the Families First Partnership
programme.
The report and associated material provide helpful information
for all social work leaders and managers, as many of the ways to
ease unnecessary workload sit at local level.
In addition to the report, DfE has worked with Research in
Practice to use the initial findings from NWAG to develop
resources to support practitioners. These resources are
available on the Support for Social Workers platform and
include:
a self-assessment tool comprising:
9 essential conditions for successful hybrid working
a development plan for hybrid working structures
a resource for practitioners in social work and social care at
every level to help improve understanding of effective
supervision of digital practice
examples of how different local authorities have used
workload models to reduce unnecessary workload and make
their admin more efficient
a supervision tool for assessing reflexivity (STAR) for
organisations to use alongside their existing supervision
Contents
Supervision
Administrative support
and use of AI in case
recording
Digital practice and
hybrid working
Children social care
reforms and social
work workload
policy
4 case studies detailing how different local authorities apply
caseload and workload management models to their
caseloads
These resources aim to help address issues around workload
and retention. We recognise that this requires commitment and
collaboration from all key stakeholders so that future solutions
reflect the diverse needs of local workforces, children and
families. This is an opportunity to improve the partnership with
the sector and local authorities. It recognises the systematic
issues that impact workload and requires a sustained effort from
us all.
Alongside the report, DfE is also publishing the supporting
material that informed its development. These reports explore
the 5 prioritised strands, providing a comprehensive breakdown
of the activity taken for each strand. This includes:
evidence scoping and research
testing thinking with members of the group
formulating insights and recommendations
DfE is taking measures as a result of the group’s work,
prioritising actions that align with and strengthen the existing
programme of reform in children’s social care.
Supervision
DfE supports the report’s conclusion that high-quality
supervision is essential in helping social workers manage their
workload effectively. DfE recognises that supervision should be
less about process and more focused on supporting the needs
of front-line practice.
DfE is committed to helping the sector enhance the quality and
impact of supervision. It is exploring a partnership with the North
West regional improvement pilot plan to test the effectiveness
of the supervision tool for assessing reflexivity (STAR). This
pilot will look at the tool’s impact on front-line supervision
practice and gather evidence on how it supports reflective,
meaningful supervision.
The insights and recommendations from the NWAG will directly
inform the development of support for practice supervisors.
This will be introduced alongside a new programme for social
workers in the first 2 years of their career.
DfE will also consider how to support continued improvements
in leadership and supervision. Evidence suggests good
leadership and supervision contribute to:
continued improvements in practice quality
a more experienced and capable workforce
increased workforce retention with lower vacancy and turnover
rates  
Following the outcome of the Spending Review, DfE will
consider additional action to support improvements in the quality
of supervision and leadership, including looking at the benefit of
national standards and the requirements for any training
programmes.
DfE agrees with the group’s assessments that national
standards alone will not lead to improvements and that any
changes would require a broad and inclusive consultation.
Administrative support and use
of AI in case recording
DfE recognises the significant potential of artificial intelligence
(AI) to support and enhance the delivery of children’s social
care. In particular, AI offers opportunities to reduce
administrative burdens on social workers, improve the quality
and timeliness of decision-making, and ultimately contribute to
better outcomes for children and families.
DfE will help to facilitate and empower local authorities and the
social work workforce to make the most of AI. DfE is committed
to ensuring that the development and deployment of AI in this
context is ethical, evidence-informed and aligned with the needs
of the workforce and the children they serve.
DfE has already worked with the Department for Science,
Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to publish guidance for local
authorities on how to develop and use data analytics tools in
children’s social care. This includes an ethics triage self-
assessment tool, and an ethics workbook, to support
responsible innovation and safeguard public trust.
DfE will continue to work collaboratively across government,
particularly with DSIT to ensure that our digital and workforce
strategies are aligned with the UK’s National AI Strategy. This
includes focusing on the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem
to support children’s social care, enabling the transition to an AI-
enabled public sector that delivers benefits across all regions,
and ensuring that governance frameworks promote innovation
while safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of children and
families.
To support this aim and build on NWAG’s AI recommendations
relating to practical application, ethics and guidance, DfE is
establishing a children’s social care data and digital centre of
excellence. The centre will engage with local authorities to
gather robust, evidence-based insights into the use of AI in
children’s social care and design support to help them use the
technology effectively.
The effective and ethical use of AI is underpinned by the
availability of high-quality, interoperable data and the adoption of
common standards. DfE’s data standards programme for
children’s social care is designed to:
improve the consistency, quality and accessibility of data
across children social care systems
facilitate the interoperability of systems, including the potential
for integration of AI tools with existing digital infrastructure
Developments in digital practice, the use of AI and their impact
on social work practice are significant features of the work of our
stakeholders. For example, after holding a leadership summit
on AI in social work practice, Social Work England (SWE)
commissioned exploratory research from Research in Practice
and a literature review from The Open University, to better
understand the AI challenges and opportunities in social work.
Following the delivery of this research, SWE will host a series of
national in-person events and a sector-wide event focused
on AI in social work early next year. These will allow for a
national conversation on current issues to help shape the future
of social work and regulation.
Digital practice and hybrid
working
DfE agrees that advancements in digital practices and hybrid
working have significantly influenced social work. These
changes must be reflected in the resources provided to social
workers. DfE will continue to promote this in supporting material
and in material developed by our partners.
DfE will also collaborate with the Local Government Association
(LGA) and the employer standards working group to review the
employer standards for social work, ensuring that they remain
relevant and responsive to the evolving landscape of social
work.
This includes addressing emerging practice challenges such as:
integrating anti-discriminatory practice across all levels of the
workforce
adapting to hybrid working models
responding to the growing role of digital tools and technology
in social work practice
The employer standards, which are included in the children
social care national framework, help employers develop
effective workforce strategies. The standards outline the
responsibilities of employers to provide social workers with:
a positive working environment
manageable workloads
access to supervision
opportunities for continuing professional development
Children social care reforms
and social work workload
As DfE’s programme of reforms in children’s social care
embeds, we expect to see changes in social workers’ workloads
and caseloads. This, combined with advice from NWAG, will
inform future policy development and thinking on social work
workload.  
DfE is in the process of planning evaluations of:
the Families First Partnership programme
the preceding Pathfinder programme, where reforms were co-
designed and implemented across 10 local authorities
As part of this work, we are assessing how the reforms are
affecting staff workload, including participating staff’s
perceptions of the impact of the reforms on their workload.
DfE recognises the importance of providing data to inform work
planning and help leaders anticipate workflows. To help identify
workload issues, DfE is planning to collect employment data on
local authority employed family help practitioners.
In addition to drawing on insights from the pathfinder
programme, DfE will engage extensively with social workers
from a wide range of backgrounds across the country to inform
future strategic priorities for the workforce.
DfE will prioritise areas that complement our overarching aims of
ensuring workforce sufficiency, stability and quality of practice.
DfE recognises there are already examples of excellent work in
these areas. We aim to work with the sector to highlight and
celebrate good practice through sector communications where
appropriate.
Workload is an urgent challenge that needs ongoing
attention. DfE will work with the sector, and relevant
representative bodies, to explore how to better support social
work leaders in managing caseloads effectively.
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Government response to the national workload action group report : Published 25 September 2025

Official Statistics
Methodology: responses to
post-inspection surveys:
inspections and visits
between 1 April 2024 and 31
March 2025
Published 25 September 2025
Applies to England
  
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Home Education, training and skills
Responses to post-inspection surveys: inspections and visits between 1 April 2024 and 31 March
2025
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Introduction
This document contains methodology and quality information
relevant to our official statistics in development release of
Responses to post-inspection surveys: inspections and visits
data, which we publish once a year.
Methodology
We invite leaders of state-funded schools, independent schools
and further education and skills, early years and social care
providers to complete the post-inspection survey when they
receive the final version of their inspection report.
The post-inspection survey information helps us to keep
improving. The insights from survey responses:
give individual inspectors first-hand feedback from providers
on the quality of their work and help them in their own personal
development
give managers information relating to direct line management
groups that helps them to improve the quality of inspection,
inspectors and inspection reports
allow strategic high-level monitoring of providers’ views
regarding the quality of inspection
The survey supports our policy and framework decisions and
operational planning. More broadly, it also gives us insights into
the impact of our work and relationship with the sectors.
The survey is voluntary. We do not oblige schools or providers
to complete it.
The survey is not anonymous. As outlined above, we use the
data to provide first-hand feedback to inspectors and their
managers that otherwise would not be available to us.
Contents
Introduction
Methodology
Official statistics in
development
Applying the Code of
Practice
The survey contains questions about the school or provider’s
inspection experience, and several statements. Respondents
are asked to read each statement and select one of the options
according to how strongly they agree or disagree with the
statement.
We have provided a separate data release for each remit. They
give a summary of the number of responses for all the
statements where the school or provider chooses to ‘strongly
agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’, or responds
‘don’t know’ (where applicable). We also present the percentage
of providers that ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ with each statement.
From September 2024, graded inspections of state-funded
schools no longer include an overall effectiveness grade.
Because of this, we no longer report responses to the survey
shown by schools and providers’ overall effectiveness outcome.
To calculate response rates to the survey, we have divided the
total number of survey responses we received by the relevant
number of inspections or visits in the time period.
For state-funded schools (where there has been most external
interest), we previously included weighting in our reporting.
However, because weighting accounts for the varying response
rates across different inspection outcomes, we are not weighting
the data in this release. We welcome your views about this.
Official statistics in
development
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) regulates our
statistical practice.
OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in
the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official
statistics should comply with.
We have produced this data as official statistics in development.
These are official statistics that are being developed; they are
existing statistics that are being produced in line with the
standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of
Practice for Statistics. We aim to develop these statistics so that
they can, eventually, be produced to the standards of the Code.
You are welcome to contact us directly at
managementinfo@ofsted.gov.uk with any comments about how
we meet these standards.
Over the next 6 months, we will review any feedback we receive
on this data release. We will use this feedback:
to assess whether to continue to publish these statistics
to evaluate whether the statistics should be published as
official statistics
Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing
regulation@statistics.gov.uk or through the OSR website.
Applying the Code of Practice
This section is broken down by the 3 pillars of the Code of
Practice for Statistics:
trustworthiness
quality
value
Trustworthiness
Timeliness and punctuality
We currently publish data once a year. We include details of
inspections that we have carried out within the reporting period.
We publish data at 9:30am on the date pre-announced in the
publication schedule.
You can also find information on any delay in publication on the
publication schedule.
The average production time for this official statistics release is
approximately 3 months after the last inspection in the financial
year. This time covers:
obtaining and cleaning the data
drafting findings
quality assuring all outputs
receiving internal sign-off
uploading the information to GOV.UK
On the day that we publish the statistics, we announce it on our
social media channels. We give pre-release access in
accordance with the Pre-release to Official Statistics Order
(2008).
Quality
Accuracy and reliability
We get information on responses, inspections and outcomes
from our administrative systems. We aim to produce the
highest-quality statistics. However, sometimes the data on the
administrative system is different from the data on published
inspection reports. This could be due, for example, to changes
during the quality assurance process. If the data recorded on the
system affects reporting, we will provide a note in the release.
Technical production
Technical production of the official statistics publication may
also result in manual errors. We use a rigorous procedure for
assuring data quality so we can minimise the risk of reporting
errors. If we discover an error in the document, we place a note
on the website and upload a corrected version of the document
as soon as possible.
Read more information on issues relating to using administrative
data.
Data obtained from other sources
We do not use data from external sources in this publication.
Value
Relevance
Information in this release allows:
sector leaders, families and providers to see the feedback we
received from our post-inspection surveys
media outlets to use our key findings to inform the public
about the feedback we received from our post-inspection
surveys
Ofsted staff to use our key findings to inform inspection
framework development and underpin policies to improve
standards
The data included in the release is generated by our inspection
process and is, therefore, administrative data.
Accessibility and clarity
We publish our releases in an accessible format on GOV.UK.
The information is publicly available, and there are no restrictions
on access to the published data. Each release includes all
responses received for inspections taking place in the financial
year. The aim of the data is to keep users informed of the
feedback that we receive about our inspection.
Each release includes underlying supporting data in an
accessible format, to allow users to perform their own analysis.
Users may use and reuse this information (not including logos)
free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the
Open Government Licence.
Performance, cost and burden on respondents
There is no burden on respondents in relation to this statistics
release because data is a by-product of Ofsted’s inspection
process. The only cost is the internal resource involved in
collating the release.
Assessment of users’ needs and perceptions
We will review these official statistics in development to ensure
that they meet users’ needs.
We welcome feedback about our statistical releases. If you
have any comments, questions or suggestions, please contact
managementinfo@ofsted.gov.uk.
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Births, death, marriages and care
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Driving and transport
Education and learning
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Environment and countryside
Housing and local services
Money and tax
Passports, travel and living abroad
Visas and immigration
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activity
Departments
News
Guidance and regulation
Research and statistics
Policy papers and
consultations
Transparency
How government works
Get involved
Help  Privacy  Cookies  Accessibility statement  Contact  Terms and conditions
Rhestr o Wasanaethau Cymraeg  Government Digital Service
All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where
otherwise stated
© Crown copyright


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