Who is this template for?
This template is designed for Head Teachers, Senior Leadership Teams, Principal Teachers, and all practitioners working with children from birth to the early stages of primary school in Scotland. It is an essential tool for anyone involved in the self-evaluation and improvement of an Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) setting, including partners in the local authority.
Why use this template?
Using this template ensures your self-evaluation is comprehensive, consistent, and directly aligned with the national standards expected by Education Scotland.
- Inspection-Ready Framework: It provides a clear, structured framework that mirrors the official ‘How good is our early learning and childcare?’ (HGIOELC) document, helping you build confidence and prepare for scrutiny.
- Robust and Evidenced Judgements: The iAbacus process guides you to make professional judgements, verify them against specific quality indicators, and support them with robust evidence, ensuring your evaluation is credible and accurate.
- Drives Meaningful Improvement: By analysing helping and hindering factors, the template helps you move beyond judgement to create targeted, effective actions that directly inform your School Improvement Plan (SIP).
- Fosters Professional Dialogue: It creates a shared language and understanding of quality among practitioners, fostering collaborative discussions focused on improving outcomes for children.
- Consistent Approach: Ideal for local authorities or school groups wanting to establish a consistent approach to quality improvement across multiple ELC settings.
How does it work?
This template uses the standard, intuitive iAbacus process: make a judgement, verify it with criteria, provide evidence, analyse helping and hindering factors, and plan for success.
The evaluation is structured around the three key Quality Indicators from the HGIOELC framework:
- 1. Leadership and Management
- 1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement
- 1.2 Leadership of learning
- 1.3 Leadership of change
- 1.4 Leadership of management and practitioners
- 1.5 Management of resources to promote equity
- 2. Learning Provision
- 2.1 Safeguarding and child protection
- 2.2 Curriculum
- 2.3 Learning, teaching and assessment
- 2.4 Personalised support
- 2.5 Family learning
- 2.6 Transitions
- 2.7 Partnerships
- 3. Successes and Achievements
- 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion
- 3.2 Securing children’s progress
- 3.3 Developing creativity and skills for life and learning
Gaining Strategic Insight
A Director of Education or Quality Improvement Officer within a local authority can use the iAbacus 'Stack' feature to compare the HGIOELC evaluations from all ELC settings in their area. This provides a powerful, at-a-glance overview of performance, making it easy to identify settings that require targeted support and to pinpoint successful strategies in high-performing settings that can be shared as best practice across the authority.
Clear, Professional Reporting
With one click, you can generate a professional, visually compelling PDF report from this template. It provides a clear, concise summary of your setting's self-evaluation, perfect for sharing with Education Scotland inspectors, your Parent Council, or local authority partners to demonstrate the rigour of your improvement process.
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.
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.
