improvement of schools as well as ensuring services are user-focused and provide
value for money. School inspections should also encourage improvement of the
education system as a whole. The goal of the Styrian school inspections in Austria
is also very broadly described as supporting schools to constantly improve their
quality and to promote the educational effectiveness and quality of the individual
school, to ensure legal and administrative compliance and equivalence and comparability
of various educational provisions within the system. The expected effects of
the Dutch Inspectorate are more specifically described as improvement of schools
towards good education, where the standards in the inspection framework are used to
detail ‘good education’.
5 Inspection of schools
The Inspectorates of Education in our study use different models and methods for
evaluation of schools to achieve these intended effects. This section first includes a
summary of how they inspect schools, the standards and thresholds they use to
classify schools as failing or performing well, the feedback they provide to schools,
how they report on evaluation findings and the sanctions, rewards and interventions
(consequences) used to motivate schools to improve. In the next section, we describe
how these inspection characteristics are expected to promote intended effects.
5.1 Types of inspection
The Inspectorates of Education in our study use “cyclical” school inspections of every
school, and differentiated inspections of particularly weak schools, to promote good
education. Differentiated school inspections are generally implemented to increase the
efficiency of school inspections by targeting inspection resources to potentially weak
schools. Also, the increasing scale and professionalism of some schools allow for
differentiated inspections when Inspectorates of Education can use results of selfevaluations
to target inspection visits and potential areas for improvement.
Both types of school inspections are however also often used as parallel methods
by the same Inspectorate of Education. The Netherlands, for example, uses early
warning analyses to schedule inspection visits in potentially failing schools, while
each school also receives at least one inspection visit every 4 years in which specific
areas of concern or national targets are evaluated. Similarly, Ofsted conducts regular
inspection visits to all schools, while 40 % of schools graded as satisfactory, and all
schools graded as inadequate, receive monitoring inspections. In Sweden, regular
supervision includes basic inspection visits to all schools once every 4 to 5 years,
while schools that are evaluated as weak receive more elaborate ‘widened’ school
inspections. The selection of schools for widened inspection is based on grades and
results on national tests, observations made in previous inspections, complaints and
questionnaire responses from students, parents and teachers.
The Irish, Czech and Styrian Inspectorate of Education on the other hand only
carry out whole school evaluations of all schools. In Ireland, these inspections are
generally scheduled once every 5 years. However, recent policy changes in Ireland
have seen the introduction of ‘incidental inspections’. Unannounced and truncated in
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terms of what they examine, there is a suggestion that this new category may be used
to assist weak schools, although it is not clear if re-inspection will be part of this
process. New policy directions in Sweden also imply a move from regular “cyclical
inspections” to a more differentiated model in which schools are deliberately targeted
for inspections. In Styria and the Czech Republic, the original schedule of full
cyclical inspections proved too ambitious, and school inspectors currently use additional
criteria and strategies for the selection of schools, such as, for example,
choosing schools with young/new head teachers. In the Czech Republic, the number
of school inspectors and inspection days per visit is decreased when small schools are
inspected or when the preparation phase included extensive information.
In addition, the Inspectorates of Education in Sweden, England, Ireland, the
Netherlands and the Czech Republic often also implement thematic school inspections
of, for example, the teaching in specific subject areas or the use of ICT in
schools. These inspections are added to the regular cycle of school inspections.
Sweden even uses a different (research-based) inspection team and procedure to
undertake these types of school inspections. Thematic school inspections are scheduled
in a selection of schools, or information is additionally collected during regular
inspection visits. Results are reported to individual schools, and a general report
summarizing the main findings is also published.
Self-evaluations conducted by schools are an important part of all school inspection
systems in our study. A focus on self-evaluation is often prompted by a tradition of
autonomy and decentralization of educational policy. Inspectorates of Education align
their inspections to the school’s priorities for improvement, and self-evaluation at the
local level is expected to guarantee school development (e.g. in the Netherlands). The
option of a greater emphasis on school autonomy and self-evaluation (as opposed to
accountability and measuring student and teacher performance) is sometimes made when
there is little agreement on the inspection criteria and methods of evaluation (Ireland).
The results of these self-evaluations are in theory used by Inspectorates of Education as a
relevant source of information in targeting inspection visits and/or forming a judgement
on the quality of the school. In the Netherlands, self-evaluations of schools are for
example part of the early warning analyses to identify potentially failing schools and
schedule these schools for inspection visits. The role of school inspections is also to
ensure that internal systems of evaluation and self-review are implemented effectively.
Inspectorates in the Netherlands, England, Sweden and Ireland evaluate the quality of
self-evaluation, and the feedback they provide on the product and process of selfevaluation
should improve such systems. In these countries, schools are required to
formally report on self-evaluation activities and are invited to make statements regarding
areas that are covered in the inspection framework to assure alignment of self-evaluation
results to inspection activities. In Ireland, the Netherlands and England schools are also
required to survey stakeholders (parents and students) as part of their self-evaluation and
gain insight in their opinions on the functioning and performance of the school.
In England, strong support is provided to schools for self-evaluation through
accompanying self-evaluation forms and by detailed (external) back-up data, gathered
over a period of time. Schools can use these data to support self-generated claims
and satisfaction ratings. In practice, the actual importance accorded to self-evaluation
varies greatly, depending on the skills and resources schools have to gather evidence
and make judgements on their own functioning.
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5.2 Standards, thresholds and feedback
The Inspectorates of Education in our study address three types of standards: legal
standards (indicating the extent to which schools comply with regulations), standards
relating to the context and process quality of education and finally standards defining
the performance or results of schools. The Inspectorate of Education in Styria also
includes the goals of the specific school (as documented in a school program) in the
inspection framework and evaluation.
School inspections on legal standards for example check the extent to which
schools provide equal access to education for all students (Sweden), or offer a
minimum number of lesson hours (the Netherlands, Ireland). Standards related to
the quality of education are often inspired by educational research on school improvement
and/or school effectiveness. The indicators of school effectiveness as
described by Scheerens (2009) are to varying degrees covered by inspection frameworks
in each country. Indicators on opportunity to learn and learning time, achievement
orientation, clear and structured teaching, challenging teaching approaches and
orderly learning environment are part of the inspection frameworks in at least four
countries of our study:
– Opportunity to learn and learning time: offering pupils a range of subjects and
tasks that cover educational goals; classroom exercises corresponding with the
content of the tests for monitoring performance. Opportunity to learn has different
aspects: the quality of the curriculum (i.e. the textbooks and methods), the
amount of time offered to reach the targets of the curriculum, and last but not
least, the amount of students that lag behind so far that they do not even have a
chance to reach the minimum targets. (Scheerens 2009, p. 33; van der Grift/
ICALT study,2007, p. 263
).
– Achievement orientation: clear focus on mastering basic concepts; high expectations
of student achievement and record keeping of student achievement. Also,
explicit or implicit standards are used as targets and as assessment norms. The core
idea is the determination to obtain the best possible performance from pupils.
Standards are set in such a way that pupils are challenged, but not demotivated by
either too high or too low expectations (Scheerens 2009, pp. 46 and 63).
– Clear and structured teaching: structured, direct teaching and a clear goaldirected
teaching approach (Scheerens 2009, p. 41).
– Challenging teaching approach: stimulating motivation through cognitive
challenge.
– Orderly learning environment: emotionally supportive climate, order and discipline
in classroom climate, achievement pressure, mastery and performance
orientation (Scheerens 2009, p. 45).
No Inspectorate