What counts as evidence
Evidence is anything authentic that shows a standard or practice is being carried out: curriculum records, policies, assessments, student work and reflections, professional learning records and the minutes of meetings where decisions were made. The test is not whether it is impressive but whether it is real, current and connected to what actually happens in the school.
The IB's current programme documentation is the authority on the standards and practices you are evidencing, and on what a visit expects. This article is about organising what you have, not about what the IB requires.
Why evidence gets scattered
When curriculum, assessment, portfolios and policies live in different places, a coordinator spends the weeks before a visit searching, checking versions and assembling. The problem is not that the evidence does not exist. It is that nobody can find it, or say which copy is current, or who is responsible for keeping it up to date.
The fix is structural, and it starts before a visit is announced. For what to collect and when, see the evidence checklist for IB authorisation; this article is about how to hold it.
Build an evidence register
A register is one list, organised by the requirement it supports rather than by where the file happens to live. The columns matter more than the tool.
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Standard and practice | The requirement this evidence supports |
| Evidence item | A plain description of what it is |
| Type | Policy, curriculum record, assessment, student work, professional learning or minutes |
| Source | Where the original lives, and which version is current |
| Owner | The person responsible for keeping it accurate |
| Status | Complete, in progress or missing |
| Review date | When it was last checked, and when it is next due |
| Permissions | Whether it contains student data that needs care |
A category-by-category IB school accreditation checklist
The register says how to hold evidence; a checklist says what to look for. Use this as a starting point for your own, and treat the IB's current standards and practices as the authority on what is actually expected.
- Curriculum evidence: curriculum maps, units, inquiry documentation, progression across year groups, learning experiences and records of curriculum review
- Assessment evidence: assessment plans, the criteria or objectives used, moderation, feedback, gradebook records and reporting
- Student evidence: portfolios, reflections, projects, student goals and other learning evidence, held with appropriate privacy controls
- Policy and governance evidence: the policies the IB expects, with review dates, and records of who approved them
- Professional learning evidence: what leaders and teachers have done, and how it changed practice
- Status for every item: complete, in progress or missing, with an owner and the source document kept connected
Collect it during normal work
Tag evidence as it is produced, not afterwards. A unit planner, a moderated piece of student work or a set of meeting notes is already evidence the day it is made, and attaching it to the register then costs a minute. Reconstructing it a year later costs an afternoon and is less convincing.
Assign ownership by practice, not by document, so that when a policy is revised someone knows it is theirs to update in the register.
Where skodle fits
This section names our own product, so read it as that. A spreadsheet with the columns above is a sound register, and many schools run one.
skodle holds a starter set of IB standards and practices, grouped under Purpose, Environment, Culture and Learning, which a school extends with its own. Evidence is linked to a practice from the work it comes from: a unit, an assessment, a portfolio entry, a project or a reflection, and a policy can be attached as a document. Each practice carries a status (not started, in progress, met) and actions with an owner and a due date, and a gap view lists practices that are not met and have no evidence, with overdue actions counted. A read-only, expiring link for a visiting team also exists. See accreditation management and the candidate-school workflow.
The limits, plainly. Linking evidence to a practice is done by a person, not automatically, and a status is set by a person rather than inferred. The starter set is a representative one and is not the IB's own numbered text; accreditation is modelled against IB standards and practices, not other frameworks. The visiting-team link shows practice status, evidence titles, kinds and dates and actions, not the files, and it is not yet something a coordinator creates with a button. skodle cannot grant authorisation or predict an evaluator's judgement, which stay with the IB.
Run a gap review
A gap review asks, practice by practice: is there evidence, is it good, and who owns it? Identify what is complete, in progress or missing, assign owners, and review the quality of what exists rather than counting documents. A practice with twelve weak pieces of evidence is in a worse position than one with two strong ones.
Quality before quantity
A visiting team is helped by clear evidence with context, not a large folder of disconnected documents. For each item, be able to say what it shows, when it was made and how it connects to practice. If you cannot, it is not yet evidence.
Before the visit
In the final weeks, check source documents against the register, verify permissions and dates, confirm consistency between documents, and make sure a visitor can navigate. Then rehearse: ask a colleague from another department to find three pieces of evidence without help. The exercise is unkind and it finds the gaps.
The wider preparation, including the self-study that precedes evaluation, is in IB programme evaluation and self-study.
