Who is this template for?
This essential self-evaluation template is designed for leaders of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) partnerships in England, including School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) providers, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), and Teaching School Hubs. The target audience includes Headteachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), Governors, Trustees, and MAT CEOs responsible for the quality of teacher training. It provides a clear structure for assessing performance against the core judgements of the ITE 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 partnership's 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 course leaders and mentors, before challenging and validating that insight against specific, official criteria embedded directly into the template.
- Evidence-Based Accountability: Eliminates the need for fragmented paperwork across different placement schools. You can attach all supporting documentation—including trainee progress data, mentor feedback, external examiner reports, and improvement plans—directly to each judgement, creating a single, robust evidence base for inspectors and Governance boards.
- 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 trainee development and amplifying existing strengths in your curriculum.
- Fosters Collaborative Ownership: Enables multiple staff (e.g., Course Leaders, Mentors, Partnership Leads) to contribute their perspectives and evidence to the same evaluation, building a powerful, shared view of the partnership'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, teaching and training
- Achievement
- Professional behaviours, personal development and well-being
- Leadership
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders of large partnerships or Multi-Academy Trusts, such as a MAT CEO, the comparison features of iAbacus provide powerful strategic oversight. A MAT CEO would overlay the 'Initial Teacher Education Self-Evaluation' abacuses from all academies or training hubs in the trust. This allows them to quickly compare overall performance across the core inspection areas, identify schools that require targeted support, and pinpoint successful strategies in high-performing training providers 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 school'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.
