Meetings are full. Training is scheduled. Initiatives are underway. Updates are shared. From the outside, it can look busy and purposeful. But the real test of strategy isn’t how much activity is taking place — it’s whether the people doing the work understand what it’s all for.

Deciding what’s actually worth staff time You’re making decisions right now with limited budget, limited time, and limited capacity. Most of them aren’t ideal choices — they’re more like trade-offs. If something new comes in, something else has to give. If time is spent in one place, it’s taken from another. That’s why return on time is a useful lens. But that isn’t what the new EIF is asking for.

For a long time, schools have felt pressure to demonstrate activity. More initiatives. More training. More strategies. More evidence folders. But volume has never been the same thing as quality — and under the new framework, that difference is becoming harder to ignore. But that isn’t what the new EIF is asking for.

If it feels like every conversation in education right now eventually lands on outcomes, you’re not imagining it. Outcomes are everywhere. In meetings. In inspections. In improvement plans. In emails you haven’t quite had time to read yet. Outcomes. Progress. Impact. Evidence. On repeat.

One of the most powerful — and often overlooked — leadership skills under the new EIF is noticing. Inspectors are placing high value on how leaders understand the real lived experience of staff and pupils: confidence levels, attendance patterns, small shifts in behaviour, subtle barriers emerging in particular groups.

Under the new EIF, staff voice is no longer incidental — it is a core part of how Leadership + Governance is evaluated. And inspectors aren’t listening for slogans. They’re listening for alignment, confidence, understanding, and culture.

Curriculum conversations during inspections are already looking different. Inspectors are digging into how knowledge is introduced, revisited, and adapted - and how teaching works for every learner, not just those who pick things up quickly.

Now that the new EIF is live, the old comfort blanket of a single overall judgement has disappeared. Instead, schools receive a profile across multiple evaluation areas, each graded from Exceptional to Urgent Improvement. It creates a fairer picture but demands much clearer evidence.