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.

When frameworks change, expectations tend to creep up with them. There’s a sense that schools should already have answers, already be further along, already be able to point to impact everywhere at once. But that isn’t what the new EIF is asking for.

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.

The new EIF is officially live, and Inclusion is already proving to be the area schools feel most exposed in. Inspectors want to see how consistently staff remove barriers, how leaders know what’s happening in classrooms, and how schools track the difference this makes for pupils who face disadvantage or additional needs.

Is Teacher Wellbeing Being Neglected in the Pursuit of the Perfect Score? As a former teacher myself, I know all too well the immense...