Private Education: Inspections
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding her Department has provided to Ofsted for the inspection of independent schools in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Morgan
Ofsted inspects around 50% of the 2,496 (July 2025) registered private schools in England. There is currently disparity between the fees charged for inspections and full cost recovery.
The table below sets out the budgeted cost of inspections compared to the fee income, over the last three years. Ofsted do not hold comparable data for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years as Ofsted inspections were still in part affected by Covid and were therefore not typical years of inspection activity.
Year | Full cost - £million | Fee income - £million | % of costs recovered |
2022/23 | 6.8 | 1.9 | 28% |
2023/24 | 6.4 | 2.3 | 36% |
2024/25 | 6.5 | 2.2 | 34% |
Government policy is that costs associated with inspections by government bodies should be recoverable. This will reduce the need for government subsidy. The government is considering options to close the gap.
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