Who is this template for?
This template is designed for school leaders and staff in Scotland who are responsible for driving strategic improvement. This includes Head Teachers, Senior Leadership Teams, and Principal Teachers. It is also highly relevant for those with oversight of schools, such as Governors, Trustees, and leaders within local authorities or school groups.
Why use this template?
Using this template provides a clear, structured process to evaluate and enhance your school's approach to Learning for Sustainability, a key aspect of the Curriculum for Excellence.
- Align with National Standards: The framework is closely aligned with How Good Is Our School? 4 (HGIOS?4), ensuring your self-evaluation is robust, comprehensive, and ready for inspection.
- Stimulate Meaningful Dialogue: It provides a powerful tool to stimulate discussion and collaborative action among staff, learners, parents, and community partners towards a shared vision for sustainability.
- Create an Evidence-Based Plan: The iAbacus process guides you from initial judgement to creating a single, evidence-rich improvement plan, ensuring your strategy is grounded in an accurate understanding of your strengths and areas for development.
- Identify Drivers and Barriers: Use the 'Helps and Hinders' analysis to pinpoint the specific factors that are supporting or blocking your progress, allowing you to create a highly targeted and effective action plan.
- Engage the Whole School Community: Structure your evaluation around key areas that involve the entire school community, fostering a collective sense of ownership over your sustainability goals.
- Visually Track Progress: Use the intuitive abacus beads to visually track your journey over time, moving from 'Starting' to 'Highly Effective' and demonstrating the impact of your improvement efforts.
How does it work?
This template uses the proven iAbacus process to guide your thinking. You'll start by making a professional judgement on your current performance, verify it against the framework's criteria, support it with evidence, analyse the factors affecting your progress, and create a targeted action plan for success.
The evaluation is structured around the following key areas from the Education Scotland framework:
- Self-evaluation for self-improvement
- Leadership of learning
- Leadership of change
- Leadership and management of staff
- Management of resources to promote equity
- Curriculum
- Learning, teaching and assessment
- Partnerships
- Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion
- Raising attainment and achievement
- Creativity and employability
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders overseeing a local authority or group of schools, iAbacus provides a unique strategic overview. By using the 'Stack' feature, you can compare the Learning for Sustainability abacuses from all your schools on a single screen. This provides a powerful, at-a-glance view of progress across the group, making it easy to identify and share best practice, spot common challenges, and direct support where it's needed most.
Clear, Professional Reporting
With one click, you can export your entire evaluation into a professional, visually compelling PDF report. This report is perfect for sharing with your governing body, Parent Council, or an inspector from Education Scotland, providing a clear and concise summary of your school's approach, progress, and plans for Learning for Sustainability.
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.
