iAbacus blog
Schools Improve Marketing with New iAbacus Template
For many schools, developing a comprehensive marketing plan can be quite daunting—especially for leaders who are already juggling a multitude of responsibilities....
Empowering Subject Leaders to Achieve Gatsby Benchmarks with iAbacus
The 2024 update to the Gatsby Benchmarks has reaffirmed their importance in guiding schools to deliver high-quality careers education...
Habit 1: Be Proactive – Embracing Proactivity with iAbacus
When I set out to create iAbacus, I knew that empowering educators to take charge of their own growth was at the heart of what I wanted to achieve. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People...
Balancing Technology and Wisdom: The Story of iAbacus
In a world where technology is evolving faster than ever, it can be challenging to stay focused on what truly matters. For school leaders especially, there’s a delicate balance to strike...
Introducing a New Attendance Improvement Template in iAbacus
We are delighted to announce that iAbacus now includes a template for evaluating and improving attendance based on criteria from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)...
Empowering Scottish Educational Leaders with iAbacus
In the educational sphere, the need for rigorous self-evaluation and strategic planning cannot be overstated. It is through these mechanisms that schools and educational institutions can identify...
Enhancing SSE in Ireland: A Closer Look at iAbacus for School Principals
Principals in Ireland navigate a complex educational landscape, where the SSE process is integral to school improvement. iAbacus offers features that align with existing SSE practices...
iAbacus: Unlocking the Power of the 7 Habits for Continuous Improvement
My journey with Stephen Covey’s "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" began early in my career, and the impact of this transformative book on my life and work has been undeniable...
iAbacus Introduces New Solution for MAT Dashboards
Are your school improvement efforts hindered by data overload? Do your dashboards feel more like a maze of numbers than a roadmap to success? We've heard your frustrations, and we're excited to...
Empowering Reading Leaders with iAbacus: Harnessing the DfE Reading Framework for Self-Evaluation and Strategic Planning
In today’s education landscape, reading is one of the top priorities and most talked about subjects, because it is a fundamental skill that...
The Power of iAbacus: Unleashing individual potential
Why did we create iAbacus? We realised that, in a world where data and numbers are often viewed as the definitive measure of performance, it's easy to ignore the human factor...
Empowering Educators: Using iAbacus to Leverage Helping Factors and Mitigate Hindering Factors
In the world of education, navigating the range of factors that help or hinder teaching and learning is a complex puzzle. Luckily, tools like iAbacus...
Reflective Teaching: The Role of Self-Evaluation in Professional Development
Reflective teaching is a cornerstone of professional growth in education. It's an approach that involves teachers regularly scrutinising their teaching methods, assessing the impact...
Self-Evaluation and Action Plans for MATs: Introducing DfE Trust Quality Description Templates
In line with the Department for Education's ongoing commitment to provide greater clarity for the sector, the draft Trust Quality Descriptions were unveiled earlier this spring...
Reclaiming Professional Insight: The iAbacus team reflect on a major benefit of iAbacus for School
Working with school leaders we often hear a concern that whilst data plays a crucial role in shaping their decision making, it can sometimes overshadow the...
Simple software solutions are the most effective
Leonardo Da Vinci is widely quoted as having said: “simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication”. His 500-year old sentiment has been repeated many times throughout history and business...
Benefits of a teacher growth model in schools
John Pearce asks why the notion of teacher growth is exciting a new generation of school leaders. He looks beyond the feel-good factor to explain how it works and how leaders can implement it – if they haven’t already...
Complimentary Leadership Webinars for Multi-Academy Trusts by MATvista
Managing a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) comes with the task of overseeing a range of critical areas, from quality assurance to strategic planning, risk management, and compliance. To help navigate...
A free offer to support remote education provision
At iAbacus, we’ve seen how hard schools are working to offer high quality remote education in very challenging conditions. We take our hats off to you. And we want to help – so we’re offering you something for free...
New Estyn template for school self-evaluation and improvement planning
We have been working with schools in Wales for over ten years - and today we are pleased to announce the release of a new template to help schools (and PRUs) with self-evaluation and improvement planning using the latest...
The Scottish advantage
The Scottish Government’s 2019 National Improvement Framework is a step ahead of its southern neighbours because it completes the cycle of school improvement from judgement to analysis and action, says John Pearce. The...
New functionality – more accurate and consistent judgements
iAbacus now has the option of including your own review statements which users then RAG rate – making it quicker and easier for them to determine whether their judgements...
How to use data to improve organisational performance
When gold was discovered in California 150 years ago, nearly 300,000 hopeful prospectors rushed to the Pacific West. They lined the riverbanks, armed only with metal pans, patiently sifting for days and weeks through gravel...
A deep dive into Ofsted
The 2019 Ofsted Inspection Framework is live, but schools still face uncertainty about what is meant by “deep dives”, a “top level view” and scrutinising “curriculum intent”. John Pearce offers his definition of curriculum intent, implementation and impact...
How to show curriculum intent, implementation and impact
Feedback from schools inspected since September 2019 indicates that Ofsted inspectors are spending less time with senior leaders, and more talking to middle leaders...
Three-step preparation for inspection under the 2019 framework
One thing we can predict about the early days of the new Ofsted framework is this: inconsistency will be a problem. iAbacus co-creator John Pearce offers three steps to help senior leadership teams...