If you lead a group of nurseries, your challenges sit on two levels at once.
On one hand, you think like every nursery leader:
- Are children safe, happy and learning?
- Is my staff team supported?
- Are we ready for Ofsted?
On the other hand, you carry an additional weight:
- How do I know what’s really happening across all of our settings?
- Where are the bright spots we can learn from?
- Where are the vulnerabilities that could catch us out?
Most nursery groups I speak to rely on some combination of:
- Spreadsheets
- Individual Word documents from each manager
- Ad-hoc visits and “feel”
All of that takes time. And it still doesn’t give you the one thing you really need:
A clear, comparable picture of quality across the whole group, in one place.
The consistency problem
Your managers are working flat out.
They care about their teams and the children in front of them. They’re juggling staffing, parents, training, budgets and the unexpected. When you ask for self-evaluation or quality reports, they understand why – but it often lands as “another thing” to do.
So you end up in a familiar place:
- Some settings send you detailed, thoughtful evaluations.
- Some send something because it’s been requested.
- Some are still “working on it”.
Even when everything arrives, it’s hard to compare like with like. Everyone writes in a different style, focuses on slightly different aspects and uses different language.
You can’t easily answer simple but crucial questions, like:
- “Which three nurseries most need support on curriculum and teaching this term?”
- “Where is staff development having the best impact – and what can others copy?”
The result is a lot of effort, not always matched by clarity.
What group leaders really need
From my work with MATs and school groups, I’ve seen that leaders like you are usually looking for three things:
- Consistency of process
- Every setting using the same framework and language
- Evaluations aligned directly to the NEW Ofsted toolkit
- Visibility at a glance
- Being able to see, on one screen or report, how all nurseries are judging themselves in key areas
- A foundation for support, not surveillance
- Using that information to start supportive conversations, not to “name and shame”
That’s exactly the thinking behind how we use iAbacus with groups.
A simple, visual approach for multiple nurseries
At individual nursery level, iAbacus helps leaders build their self-evaluation and improvement plan using the new 2025 Early Years toolkit, in the four steps I described in the previous article: Judge, Evidence, Analyse, Plan.
For groups, we layer something on top:
- Each nursery creates their own abacus, bead by bead.
- As a group leader, you can then overlay or compare abacuses across settings.
In practical terms, that means you can:
- See all nurseries’ judgements for, say, Curriculum and teaching on one view.
- Spot quickly where judgements are strong, and where managers are signalling a need for help.
- Drill down into the evidence and analysis behind any bead, without asking for extra paperwork.
It turns a mess of documents into one coherent picture.
From data to dialogue
Of course, a clever visual doesn’t improve children’s experiences on its own. What matters is the conversations it unlocks.
When you have a group-wide view, you can:
- Target support
- “I can see three settings are struggling with workforce development – let’s put a group CPD offer or coaching in place.”
- Share what works
- “This nursery is strong on inclusion; let’s ask their manager to lead a network session.”
- Spot patterns early
- “Over the last two terms, several settings have nudged their judgement down in a particular area – what’s changing and how do we respond?”
Because every judgement is linked to real evidence and a live action plan, you’re not dealing with abstract scores. You’re talking about real practice, in real rooms, with real people.
Reducing duplication, respecting time
There’s another benefit your managers will feel immediately.
Instead of:
- Writing one version of their self-evaluation “for Ofsted”,
- Another version “for head office”,
- And a third version in their own notes,
…they can work in one system that serves all three purposes.
Their iAbacus evaluation:
- Feeds their own leadership thinking and team meetings
- Is inspection-ready
- And gives you, as a group leader, the overview you need
That matters because time is the one resource no one has spare. Any improvement process that doesn’t respect that is doomed.
A partnership approach to group improvement
If you lead a nursery group and any of this resonates, I’d suggest a simple starting point:
- Choose one or two nurseries as a pilot.
- Support their leaders to build their self-evaluation and plan in iAbacus using the new Ofsted Toolkit.
- Then look together at what that reveals – within each setting and across them.
From there, you can decide whether a wider rollout makes sense for your group.
My role, and the role of my team, is to make that as straightforward as possible – through training, ongoing support and helping you tailor things to your context. It’s never about dropping software on people and walking away.
If you’d like to explore what this might look like for your group, you’re very welcome to:
- Watch the 10-minute Early Years toolkit walkthrough here.
- Or click here to book a brief, no-obligation chat with me to talk through your current approach and see whether this way of working could help.
Whatever you decide, thank you for the leadership you’re providing – not just in individual nurseries, but across entire communities of children, families and staff.
