Who is this template for?
This template is purpose-built for Catholic Multi-Academy Trust leaders across England, including MAT CEOs, Trustees, Executive Leadership Teams, Headteachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), and Local Governors. It provides an authentic, coherent structure for evaluating whole-school and trust-wide provision, establishing a common language of excellence across every academy while upholding the canonical and civic responsibilities of Catholic education.
Why use this template?
Rooted in the vision of human flourishing (John 10:10) and endorsed by the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), this template unites spiritual formation with institutional excellence:
- Centres on Authentic Catholic Life and Mission: Keeps Christ-centred education, chaplaincy, liturgical life, and Catholic Social Teaching (CST) at the heart of every strategic decision, ensuring adherence to Canon Law (Can. 806) and the Archbishop's directives.
- Dual Alignment with Diocesan & National Standards: Bridges Catholic School Inspection (CSI) expectations with the Department for Education’s (DfE) trust quality descriptions and CST’s Building Strong Trusts framework.
- Transparent Trust-Wide Quality Assurance: Delivers a consistent evaluation architecture across all member academies, providing Trustees and executive leaders with total visibility over school standards, governance, and spiritual witness.
- Embeds Subsidiarity and Stewardship: Respects local school context while establishing clear trust-wide benchmarks for resource allocation, workforce formation (including Formatio and Early Career Teacher development), and capital planning.
- Drives Targeted Action via Root-Cause Analysis: Moves beyond passive compliance by utilizing iAbacus's force-field analysis ("helping and hindering factors"), helping teams diagnose barriers to improvement and build actionable, accountable strategic plans.
- Prioritises the Vulnerable and Marginalised: Embeds the principle of the preferential option for the poor, focusing scrutiny on provision and outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, children with SEND, and those known to social care.
How does it work?
This template operates on the proven, intuitive five-step iAbacus sequence: making an initial professional judgement, verifying against criteria, evidencing with qualitative and quantitative documentation, diagnosing helping and hindering factors, and building strategic action plans. Performance across each area is evaluated across three clear levels: Needing Renewal, Developing, and Strong.
The evaluation is structured across the framework's six core pillars:
- 1. Catholic Life and Mission
- 1.1 Mission
- 1.2 Bishop’s Vision, protocols and directives
- 1.3 Religious Education
- 1.4 Prayer & Liturgy
- 1.5 Catholic Environment
- 1.6 Chaplaincy
- 1.7 Recruitment (workforce)
- 2. High Quality and Inclusive Education
- 2.1 Culture
- 2.2 Curriculum
- 2.3 Student Outcomes
- 2.4 Accessible to all
- 2.5 Inclusive pastoral support
- 2.6 Enrichment
- 2.7 Behaviour and Attendance
- 2.8 Destinations
- 2.9 Collaboration
- 3. School Improvement
- 3.1 Culture
- 3.2 School Improvement Model
- 3.3 Transformation
- 3.4 System-led Improvement
- 4. Catholic Workforce
- 4.1 Culture
- 4.2 Workforce, resilience and wellbeing
- 4.3 Retention
- 4.4 Working Environment
- 4.5 Developing New and Early Career Teachers
- 4.6 Continuing Professional Development and Formation
- 4.7 Collaboration
- 4.8 Line Management & Career progression
- 4.9 Equality, diversity, inclusion
- 5. Leadership and Governance
- 5.1 Strategic approach
- 5.2 Workplace Culture
- 6. Finance and Operations
- 6.1 Culture
- 6.2 Financial strategy
- 6.3 Resource Allocation
- 6.4 Capital strategy
- 6.5 Reserves
- 6.6 Financial information management
- 6.7 Place Planning
Gaining Strategic Insight
For Multi-Academy Trust CEOs and central executive teams, this template unlocks panoramic strategic oversight. By using the iAbacus Overlay feature, a MAT CEO can superimpose evaluations from all academies onto a single visual screen, immediately highlighting trust-wide trends in Catholic life, curriculum progression, or financial resilience. Leaders can quickly pinpoint which schools require targeted intervention and identify beacon schools excelling in specific areas—such as chaplaincy engagement or disadvantaged progress—enabling high-impact strategies to be shared and scaled across the entire diocesan family of academies.
Clear, Professional Reporting
When reporting to the MAT Trust Board, Foundation Governors, or Diocesan Officers, iAbacus converts complex evaluation data into concise, visually engaging PDF reports with a single click. A board report generated from a 'Stack' or 'Overlay' provides trustees with a transparent, comparative executive summary of trust-wide performance, with full drill-down capability into underlying evidence and strategic action plans, grounding board scrutiny in verifiable impact.
References / Source Material
How to Get Started
New to iAbacus? Discover how this template can support your improvement strategy. Book a personalised demo or start a free trial to explore the full platform. Visit www.iAbacus.com to learn more.
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