Preparing for Cognia accreditation without the last-minute scramble
How to gather evidence from every department all year, organised by standard, so the accreditation visit is a confirmation rather than a project.
What accreditation asks of a school
Cognia accreditation looks at the school as a whole. Its performance standards are grouped around four key characteristics: leadership for learning, engagement of learning, growth in learning and a culture of learning. Before the visit, the school completes a self-assessment and gathers evidence for each standard, and the visiting team checks it against what they see.
Many schools find the evidence, not the teaching, is the hard part. Months of good work sit in departmental folders in different formats, and collecting it becomes a project of its own in the weeks before the visit.
A year-round approach
- Map your evidence sources early. Decide which routine work (lesson plans, assessments, observations, curriculum maps) shows which standard.
- Collect as you go. Evidence that is approved and tagged during the year is current and consistent; evidence gathered in a rush rarely is.
- Include every department. Accreditation is school-wide. Use the same structure everywhere so evidence can be compared and combined.
- Watch coverage. Review which standards have strong evidence and which have little, while there is still time to act.
- Keep the narrative and the evidence together. Your self-assessment is stronger when every claim points to specific, dated work.
Use the standards wording and numbering from your school’s own Cognia materials; TeachFolio does not replace Cognia’s tools or guidance.
How TeachFolio helps
- Cognia key characteristics are built in, and the school adds its own numbered standards beneath them.
- Heads of Department and teachers tag work as it is handed in; folder defaults do most of it automatically.
- The evidence pack gathers approved work from every department by standard, printable or as a spreadsheet for your accreditation team.
- Coverage is visible all year, so gaps show up months before the visit.
- Shared lesson observations count as evidence too, alongside teachers’ work.
When evidence is collected as part of normal work, preparing for the visit becomes a matter of review, not a scramble.
See how TeachFolio does it with your own folders and standards.
