Who is this template for?
This template is designed for Headteachers, Rectors, and Senior Leadership Teams across Scotland who are responsible for guiding the school improvement process. It is also an essential tool for Governors, Trustees, and leaders of local authorities or school groups seeking strategic oversight of the schools they support.
Why use this template?
This template provides a clear, structured framework to guide your school through a robust self-evaluation, ensuring you address the key drivers of improvement and build a culture of continuous self-improvement.
- Align with National Standards: Provides a clear, structured framework that mirrors the official How good is our school? 4th Edition (HGIOS?4) inspection framework, ensuring your self-evaluation is comprehensive and inspection-ready.
- Create a Single Source of Truth: Consolidate all judgements, qualitative evidence, and action plans into one accessible, digital location, creating a single, coherent School Improvement Plan (SIP) that is understood and owned by the whole community.
- Empower Collaborative Evaluation: Involve staff at all levels in a collaborative process. The clear structure helps build a shared understanding of the school's strengths and areas for development, fostering collective ownership of the improvement journey.
- Drive Meaningful Improvement: The process moves beyond just making judgements. By analysing the factors helping and hindering progress, your team can create targeted, effective action plans that lead to tangible improvements in outcomes for all learners.
- Strengthen Leadership: Equips school leaders with the tools to guide a transparent and evidence-based evaluation process, strengthening leadership at all levels and ensuring a consistent focus on excellence and equity.
How does it work?
This template uses the standard, intuitive iAbacus process. Your team will make judgements on performance, verify them against the HGIOS?4 criteria, provide supporting evidence, analyse the factors affecting performance, and create a detailed action plan for success.
The key areas evaluated are taken directly from the HGIOS?4 framework:
- Leadership and Management
- 1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement
- 1.2 Leadership of learning
- 1.3 Leadership of change
- 1.4 Leadership and management of staff
- 1.5 Management of resources to promote equity
- 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
- Successes and Achievements
- 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion
- 3.2 Raising attainment and achievement
- 3.3 Increasing creativity and employability
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders overseeing a group of schools, such as a local authority or federation, iAbacus provides a unique strategic advantage. By using the 'Stack' feature, a Director of Education can view the 'Whole-School Self-Evaluation' abacuses from every school in the group on a single screen. This allows for instant comparison of overall performance against the HGIOS?4 indicators, making it easy to identify schools that may require targeted support and to pinpoint successful strategies in high-performing schools that can be shared and replicated across the network.
Clear, Professional Reporting
With one click, you can generate a professional, visually compelling PDF report from this template. This is invaluable for a range of audiences:
- For Inspectors: Present a comprehensive summary of the school's self-evaluation, demonstrating a robust, transparent, and evidence-based approach to your improvement planning.
- For the Trust Board or Local Authority: A report generated from a 'Stack' or 'Overlay' of multiple schools offers a powerful, comparative overview to inform strategic decisions, review trust-wide performance, and ensure accountability.
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.
