What happened
Woodland Academy Trust is a multi-academy trust of five schools, supported centrally by Julie Carson. Before Intelligent Evidence, heads wrote a two-page SEF up to three times a year and kept their supporting evidence in files at school level, which made oversight from the centre hard work.
Then two of the trust’s schools were inspected under the new framework within a fortnight of each other, and each HMI took a different approach. The first wanted to discuss judgements on the phone before visiting. The second wanted them summarised on the call, then to see the live system once on site. Both times, Julie could see exactly what each school could evidence and react in real time.
Evidence that worked live, in the inspection call itself
In both inspections, the HMI spoke to the school’s head and Julie by phone about the school’s judgements. When the head gave the judgements, Julie had the school’s evidence open in front of her and could explain why the trust believed they were right. With five schools, she doesn’t keep that level of detail in her head, so having it there mattered.
From a day per school to half an hour
Julie’s termly school-improvement meetings used to mean roughly a day of preparation per school. With a live evidence base to open ahead of each visit, that dropped to about half an hour. She estimates it saves her around four days a term, and the visit itself can now be spent on the conversation, not the paperwork.
Strengths across the trust
With the trust-wide overview, oversight stopped being about deficits alone. Julie could see where one school was self-evaluating strong in an area another was struggling with, and start matching leaders up to learn from each other. That has been especially valuable for newly-appointed heads.
This shared clarity has reduced pressure across the team and increased confidence.
Read the full case study
The full case study goes deeper: how the trust rolled Intelligent Evidence out across all five schools at once, how Julie uses it to give trustees a factual picture rather than a subjective SEF, and what she would say to another trust considering it.
