Glossary of Key Terms
A quick reference for terms used throughout Intelligent Evidence and this knowledge base.
Framework: The set of standards you're evaluating your school against (for example, Ofsted 2025). Everything else, from categories down to individual descriptors, sits within your chosen framework.
Top Level Group: One of the main categories your framework is broken into. For Ofsted, these are the 8 inspection areas, such as Attendance and Behaviour, or Leadership and Governance.
Grade Descriptor: A specific statement or criterion within a Top Level Group that your evidence is measured against. Each Top Level Group contains several grade descriptors, and it's these that your evidence maps to.
Strength: The level a piece of evidence is being measured against. For Ofsted 2025, this is Expected or Strong.
Expected vs Strong
- Expected: the baseline level. A category reaches "Expected" once all its Expected grade descriptors are evidenced.
- Strong: the higher level. A category reaches "Strong" once all its Expected and Strong grade descriptors are evidenced.
Upload & Review: The page where your uploaded documents sit while they're being analysed, and where any suggested evidence waits to be approved or rejected before it becomes part of your evidence base.
Evidence Base: Your platform home page, showing your evidence coverage across all categories and grade descriptors, and highlighting where gaps remain.
Spotlight Approach: Our recommended way of uploading and reviewing evidence, focusing on one framework area (or strength/category) at a time, rather than uploading everything in one go. See What is the Spotlight Approach? for more detail.
Best Example: A tick you add to your strongest piece of evidence against a descriptor, so it's clearly flagged on your report.
Peer Reviewed: A tick showing that a piece of evidence has been checked and agreed by more than one person, useful when a team or SLT are reviewing evidence together.