Who is this template for?
This essential self-evaluation template is designed for school leaders in Non-Association Independent Schools in England, including Headteachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), Governors, Trustees, and MAT CEOs overseeing independent academies. It provides a clear, collaborative structure for assessing whole-school performance against the core judgements of the inspection framework. By unifying the self-evaluation process, it ensures that all judgements—from curriculum quality to governance oversight—are consistent, robust, and aligned with independent inspection expectations.
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 school 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, whether you face an Ofsted inspection or another external review.
- Empowering Judgement: Uses the core iAbacus process, beginning with the professional judgment of your SLT, 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 policy reviews, assessment data, pupil voice surveys, and reports—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 the resulting action plans are highly targeted, addressing underlying barriers and amplifying existing strengths.
- Fosters Collaborative Ownership: Enables multiple leaders and staff (e.g., subject leads, pastoral leads) to contribute their perspectives and evidence to the same evaluation, building a powerful, shared view of the school’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
- Attendance and behaviour
- Personal development and well-being
- Early years
- Post-16 provision
- Leadership and governance
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders of groups of schools, such as MAT CEOs, the comparison features of iAbacus provide powerful strategic oversight. A MAT CEO would overlay the 'Whole-School Self-Evaluation' abacuses from all academies 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 schools 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.
