What happened
Irlam Primary School is a primary school in Greater Manchester, led by headteacher Elaine Darwin. Before Intelligent Evidence, Elaine and her SLT had to read through lengthy reports to find what they needed and map it to Ofsted’s grade descriptors. That made it hard to spot gaps, and self-evaluation difficult.
The LINK Education Trust chose to trial Intelligent Evidence in the majority of its schools. Elaine uploaded three documents to see how the platform would suggest matches to the grade descriptors, and the school was up and running the same morning.
A solid evidence base within minutes
Collecting evidence used to take Elaine hours each week. She says she had a solid evidence base within 10 minutes of uploading a few key documents. The team can now upload documents and see them mapped across the framework, which has reduced their workload significantly and given them time back to focus on what’s really needed: working with children and families.
Self-evaluation with the gaps in view
Searching different sources and re-reading reports made the school’s traditional self-evaluation process take a considerable amount of time. Now, information is organised and accessible across the team, so they can see exactly where the gaps are and focus their efforts there.
Consistency across the trust
As schools within The LINK Education Trust develop their use of Intelligent Evidence, they are building a standardised way of presenting their evidence, even though each school keeps its own methods for self-evaluation. It gives the trust a single view of where its schools are doing well and where they may need support.
Read the full case study
The full case study goes deeper: how the decision was made at the trust's heads' meeting, how the team now reviews its evidence base to fill gaps, and what Elaine would say to other busy school leaders.
