Who is this template for?
This essential self-evaluation template is designed for leaders of Early Years settings in England, including maintained nursery schools, pre-schools, and reception classes within primary schools. The target audience includes Headteachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), Governors, Trustees, and MAT CEOs responsible for the quality of early years provision. It provides a clear structure for assessing performance against the core judgements of the inspection framework.
Why use this template?
This toolkit transforms the complexity of inspection preparedness into a streamlined, strategic process. It focuses professional insight where it matters most, delivering clarity and confidence to your improvement journey.
- Inspection Readiness and Alignment: Provides a clear, structured framework that mirrors the official inspection framework, ensuring your self-evaluation is comprehensive, coherent, and inspection-ready from the start.
- Empowering Judgement: Uses the core iAbacus process, beginning with the professional judgment of your practitioners and leaders, before challenging and validating that insight against specific, official criteria embedded directly into the template.
- Evidence-Based Accountability: Eliminates the need for fragmented paperwork. You can attach all supporting documentation—including observation notes, tracking data, parent feedback, and policy documents—directly to each judgement, creating a single, robust evidence base for inspectors and Governors.
- Drives Strategic Action: The built-in "Helps and Hinders" analysis forces a deep diagnosis of why performance is at its current level. This ensures that resulting action plans are highly targeted, addressing underlying barriers to children's development and amplifying existing strengths.
- Fosters Collaborative Ownership: Enables multiple staff (e.g., Room Leaders, EYFS Leads, SENCOs) to contribute their perspectives and evidence to the same evaluation, building a powerful, shared view of the setting's strengths and priorities.
How does it work?
This template follows the standard, intuitive iAbacus process of moving seamlessly from reflection to strategic action. It uses five defined performance Levels—Urgent improvement, Needs attention, Expected standard, Strong standard, Exceptional—to grade performance across the following core Areas:
- Inclusion
- Curriculum and teaching
- Achievement
- Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines
- Children’s welfare and well-being
- Leadership and Governance
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders of groups of schools, such as a MAT CEO, the comparison features of iAbacus provide powerful strategic oversight. A MAT CEO would overlay the 'Early Years Self-Evaluation' abacuses from all academies in the trust. This allows them to quickly compare overall performance across the core inspection areas, identify settings that require targeted support, and pinpoint successful strategies in high-performing Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) settings that can be replicated across the group to drive consistent quality trust-wide.
Clear, Professional Reporting
When preparing for external scrutiny or internal board meetings, the platform simplifies communication. This evaluation can be exported as a polished, visually compelling PDF report, perfect for presenting to an inspector as a summary of the setting's self-evaluation. It demonstrates a robust and transparent approach to improvement planning with all judgements backed by clear evidence and detailed action plans.
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.
