Five common time traps, and practical ways to tighten them up 1. The “One More Thing” Trap A new idea lands brilliantly. It sounds sensible enough. It’s added to the list without anything being removed. Before adding anything new, ask: What are we stopping to make space for this? If nothing moves, you’re increasing load, not improving focus.

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.

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.

Term has finished. Classrooms are quiet. You’ve finally stepped out of “school mode” and into something slower, softer, and—hopefully—restorative. Before you switch off completely, I wanted to send a small Christmas message and a few thoughts that might make your January return feel a little steadier.

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.

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.

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