Who is this template for?
This template is designed for Headteachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), Subject Leaders, and Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLE) Leaders in Wales. It provides a structured and consistent framework for middle leaders to evaluate the effectiveness of their specific curriculum area, ensuring alignment with whole-school strategic priorities.
Why use this template?
- Drive Consistent Evaluation: It establishes a cohesive and unified method for self-evaluation across all subjects and Areas of Learning and Experience, ensuring every department is working from the same clear framework.
- Empower Middle Leaders: It moves beyond a simple checklist, guiding Subject and AoLE Leaders through a process of deep analysis that builds their strategic thinking and leadership capacity.
- Create Actionable Improvement Plans: The template directly connects evaluation to action. By identifying helping and hindering factors, leaders can create targeted, evidence-based improvement plans with clear responsibilities and success criteria.
- Align with the Curriculum for Wales: The structure and focus are designed to support schools in implementing and reviewing their curriculum in line with the four purposes and the six Areas of Learning and Experience.
- Foster Professional Dialogue: The process provides a clear focus for supportive and challenging conversations between senior and middle leaders, ensuring that feedback and professional development are targeted and effective.
- Provide Clear Evidence: It helps collate and organise robust evidence of curriculum quality and impact, perfect for sharing with staff, governors, and for Estyn inspections.
How does it work?
This template follows the standard, intuitive iAbacus process: make a judgement, verify it with criteria, provide evidence, analyse helping and hindering factors, and create a targeted action plan. The evaluation is structured around the following key areas:
- Increasing effectiveness as a learner
- Increasing breadth and depth of knowledge
- Deepening understanding of the ideas and disciplines
- Refinement and growing sophistication in the use and application of skills
- Making connections and transferring learning into new contexts
Gaining Strategic Insight
For a Headteacher or senior leader, the strategic power of this template is unlocked when evaluations are compared. By using the 'Stack' feature to view the completed abacuses from every AoLE Leader, you can instantly create a visual 'heat map' of curriculum performance across the entire school. This panoramic view makes it easy to spot school-wide patterns, identify common CPD needs, or discover pockets of excellence that can be shared to raise standards for all learners.
Clear, Professional Reporting
With a single click, the complete evaluation and action plan for a specific curriculum area can be exported as a polished, visually compelling PDF report. This is ideal for a Subject Leader to share with their team during a departmental meeting, ensuring every member is clear on the agreed-upon priorities, individual responsibilities, and the success criteria for the year ahead.
References / Source Material
- Expressive Arts
- Health and Well-being
- Humanities
- Languages, Literacy and Communication
- Mathematics and Numeracy
- Science and Technology
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.
Already a subscriber? You can find this template in the template library within your iAbacus account. Simply log in, create a new abacus, and select it from the list to get started.
