The Self-Evaluation Form (SEF) is a vital tool for understanding your school’s strengths, identifying areas for improvement, and demonstrating impact to stakeholders such as Ofsted, governors, and your trust.
Keeping it up to date can feel like a big task, but with Perspective, you can manage everything in one place - making the process simpler, smarter, and always inspection-ready.
With TILDA, your intelligent SEF assistant, it’s also faster and easier than ever.
Note: Perspective SEF supports multiple inspection frameworks, so your SEF view may not always match the screenshots shown in this guide. Depending on the framework selected (and your organisation’s configuration), some menus, labels, and available features may appear slightly different. This guide is intended as a general overview of the core SEF functionality. If you have any questions or can’t find an option you expect to see, please contact our Support team at perspectivesupport@angelsolutions.co.uk.
Frameworks and Flexibility
One of Perspective’s greatest strengths is its flexibility.
Your school can work with multiple SEF frameworks — whether you’re following the latest Ofsted (2025) framework, completing a SIAMS evaluation, using CSED, or applying a custom framework developed across your trust.
Our support team can enable these frameworks behind the scenes so everything is managed in one place.
📧 To request additional frameworks: perspectivesupport@angelsolutions.co.uk
⚙️ Custom frameworks are subject to suitability and are typically enabled where they’re relevant to multiple schools.
Quick Steps
Navigate to Self Evaluation.
Select School or Team, depending on the SEF you wish to complete.
Choose the area you’d like to work on.
Use the menu on the left to begin adding evidence and information.
Make use of Bite-Sized Questions (BSQs) to gather staff input.
Add your final information in the Make a Judgement area.
Select a grade (if applicable).
Agree the section to finalise it.
💡 For a quick overview of the SEF layout and dashboard, see our Self Evaluation Dashboard guide.
Accessing the School SEF
You must be a member of the SLT to access the school SEF.
Only the Headteacher and Deputy users can add staff to this team, so if you need access, please contact them directly.
Once you’re part of the team:
Go to Self Evaluation > School in your Perspective toolbar.
You’ll arrive at the SEF dashboard.
Use the Inspection Framework drop-down to select your preferred framework.
🗓️ From September 2025, the new Ofsted Framework became the default.
Your old SEF remains available, along with all your previous content.
Gathering Evidence
Before starting your final SEF, we recommend gathering as much evidence as possible as a leadership team, by using the built-in Bite Sized Questions in Perspective. We've worked with educational leaders to break the framework down into smaller, manageable chunks, allowing you to ensure you respond to all the individual areas that Ofsted are looking for. For more information on that, check out our Gathering Evidence to Support your SEF guide.
Completing the SEF
Click on any SEF area to open it and use the drop-down menu on the left-hand side to expand the section. Your SEF sections are made up of overall grades for each area, along with text boxes for you to evidence how you believe the school has achieved the grade.
For more information on what constitutes each grade, hover over it and click Open Guidance.
Select a grade to assign it to that section. If you make a mistake, you can reset the grade to Not Graded.
You should then add evidence to support this grade. Begin typing directly into the Make a Judgement text box to add your contribution. Formatting tools (including bullet points and tables) are available, and everything saves automatically. You should Use the guidance notes to ensure your language and grading align with expectations.
Make Full Use of BSQs
If you or your leadership team used the Bite Sized Questions to gather evidence before starting, you can access and pull data from those via the Bite-Sized Questions option via the left-hand menu.
One of the most powerful features of the SEF is that you can quickly see and add answers from other SLT into your main SEF. To do this:
Navigate to Bite-Sized Questions
Click SLT Answers to view all staff submissions
Click Copy to Clipboard for any answer you want to add
Paste it directly into your Make a Judgement section
This enables collaboration and ensures your SEF incorporates the best contributions from the whole leadership team.
Agreeing a Section
Once you’re satisfied with the content of your SEF section and grade, click Agree Grade & Text.
You can revisit and update any section at any time; new agreements will overwrite previous content. Agreeing a section ensures that your contributions are formally recognised and incorporated into the final document, which will be shared with leadership, Ofsted and other stakeholders.
Using TILDA to Enhance Your SEF
TILDA is built directly into the SEF editor to make writing and refining easier.
Here’s how TILDA can support you while creating your SEF:
Upload and Autofill – If your SEF already exists in Word or PDF format, use TILDA’s Upload & Autofill option from the SEF dashboard to automatically populate each section.
See our Importing Your SEF with TILDA guide.Refine Your Writing – Within any section, click TILDA: Refine (above the text box) to enhance clarity, structure, and tone in line with the Ofsted 2025 framework.
You can also add context or select to refine based on your existing content or BSQ responses.
See our Refining Your SEF with TILDA guide.Generate from BSQs – Once SLT members have completed their Bite-Sized Questions, TILDA can use these insights to create first drafts that reflect your collective evidence.
Learn how BSQs power TILDA.
✨ TILDA saves time, reduces duplication, and ensures your SEF remains clear, consistent, and inspection-ready.
Note: TILDA is currently only available for the Ofsted framework.
Creating Targets Within the SEF
You can create SEF Targets directly within your framework and update them over time to evidence progress, monitor impact and demonstrate ongoing school improvement.
To do this, click Targets from the left hand menu. To add a new target, click Create New Target. If the target already exists in your system (it may already be on your SDP or a performance review), click Add Existing Target.
When you're done creating it, click Create Target & Link. The target will then be embedded on the SEF and you can click it to open the full editor view.
Other Options Within Each SEF Section
Each SEF section includes a range of additional tools on the left-hand side:
Attachments – Upload relevant evidence documents such as policies, monitoring records, data reports, pupil voice summaries or action plans. Keeping evidence directly within the section helps schools demonstrate the rationale behind evaluations and makes supporting documentation easily accessible during reviews or inspections.
Notes – Record informal feedback, discussion points or collaborative comments from leaders, governors or external partners. Notes provide a useful working area for ongoing reflection and development without affecting the main agreed judgement.
Agreed Answer – View the latest agreed evaluative statement and grade for the section. This provides a clear, centralised summary of the school’s current position, ensuring all stakeholders are working from the same agreed evaluation and understanding.
External Resources – Access quick links to supporting guidance, frameworks and reference materials. This can include Ofsted publications, trust guidance, DfE resources or school-specific materials to help inform evaluation and improvement planning.