Labour is radically changing the way Ofsted – the education watchdog – grades England’s schools following the tragic suicide of a headteacher.

Ofsted’s one-word school gradings are being scrapped with immediate effect.

The categories of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate will no longer be issued be inspectors.

The move comes after Reading headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life in 2023, after learning that her previously Outstanding school was being downgraded to Inadequate.

Ofsted will still hold schools to the same standards but will now provide a report card for each school, rather than a single-word rating.

The body apologised after an inquest found that one of its inspections contributed to the death of Mrs Perry.

A separate inquiry from an all-party group of MPs called for the single word grades to be axed.

Prof Julia Waters, Mrs Perry’s sister, who has been battling for the one or two-word judgements to be scrapped, said her entire family were “delighted”.

In an interview with the BBC, she said Mrs Perry’s two teenage girls said “well done” to her for fighting to bring about the reform.

Prof Waters detailed the imapct of the single-word judgment on her sister’s state of mind.

“It was the main thing that preyed on her mind. She had a really bruising inspection that left her very fragile, and that word ‘Inadequate’, she went over and over it, writing it down,” Prof Waters said of her late sister.

“She’d just had the trauma of an unexpectedly bad Ofsted but she was still anticipating the public humiliation that would come with that.”

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the need to change the system was “overwhelmingly clear”.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education said single-word gradings “fail to provide a fair and accurate assessment of overall school performance across a range of areas and are supported by a minority of parents and teachers”.