Assuring Quality In Education Policies And Approaches To School Evaluation In Europe

The report Assuring Quality in Education: Policies and Approaches to School Evaluation in Europe analyses the structures and organisation of school evaluation in primary and compulsory secondary level. It covers all EU Member States, as well as Iceland, Norway, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Turkey. Schools form the basic building blocks of education and training systems, and school evaluation is an important way to monitor and improve their quality, as well as to enhance the quality of education at large. The report analyses the two major types of school evaluation: external evaluation, conducted by evaluators who are not staff members of the school concerned, and internal evaluation, performed primarily by members of its staff. The report contains country-specific descriptions and a comparative review of school evaluation in Europe.

Recoge: Este informe analiza la estructura y organización de la evaluación de los centros educativos de primaria y secundaria con el objetivo de mejorar la calidad de los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Abarca todos los estados miembros de la UE, así como Islandia, Noruega, la Antigua República Yugoslava de Macedonia y Turquía. Compara los dos tipos principales de evaluación, la externa llevada a cabo por evaluadores que no son personal del colegio y la interna, desempeñada por los miembros del personal. También analiza los procedimientos concretos, el perfil de los evaluadores y el uso que se hace de los resultados de la evaluación.

How is European Education Governed? Data is now the lifeblood of education governance. At the international level, organisations like the OECD steer education systems through their programmes of assessment and the European Commission’s project of creating the most successful knowledge economy in the world is driven by data collection, analysis and comparison. At the national level, policy-makers increasingly depend on data to show them where they are positioned, in relation to their competitors, and draw on data to justify policy directions. Within systems, schools and teachers have become proficient in data use, and interpret their priorities with reference to data. This book draws on a three-year comparative study of the influence of data on education systems in Europe, looking at the contrasting policy contexts of Denmark, England, Finland, Scotland and Sweden, and examining the use of data in these systems, in relation to steering by Europe, as well as policy mediation and ‘translation’ of data within systems. The authors draw on interviews with key policy actors in the European Commission and with national policy makers in all five systems, as well as on local case studies and a major comparative survey of the effects of data production and use on the work of teachers and headteachers. The research brought together international researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including educationalists, political scientists and specialists in research and evaluation. The book offers new arguments relating to the use of Quality Assurance and Evaluation as a means of standardising and harmonising education policy and practice, while also drawing attention to significant variation in policy and practice across these systems. It should be of interest to researchers, post-graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in policy studies in education and more generally.

The Republic of North Macedonia has made remarkable progress in expanding access to education and strengthening institutional capacity. Yet, the majority of young Macedonians leave school without mastering the basic competencies for life and work and students’ background continues to influence performance. This review, developed in cooperation with UNICEF, provides North Macedonia with recommendations to help strengthen its evaluation and assessment system, by moving towards a system where assessment provides students with helpful feedback to improve learning.

Improving the quality of education is a constant concern of national policy-makers. Evaluation of the education offered pupils is one of the means by which this aim may be achieved. Such evaluation may assume several forms depending on the components subject to investigation, whether they be the processes activated by teachers, the tasks assumed by schools, local authority school management and administration, the functioning of the education system as a whole, or the performance of pupils who may be examined by individual teachers or schools, a local education authority or a national body. All such aspects might be the focus of a comparative study. However, the present study concentrates solely on approaches to the evaluation of schools providing compulsory education. The decision to proceed in this way reflects the terms of the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council (12 February 2001) on European Cooperation in Quality Evaluation in School Education. It is clear from the Recommendation that improvements in quality evaluation in education ultimately hinge on developments at school level. The Recommendation emphasises the interrelation between external and internal evaluation, and calls on the Member States to 'encourage school self-evaluation as a method of creating learning and improving schools, within a balanced framework of school self-evaluation and any external evaluations' (page 60/53 of the Recommendation). The present introduction is in two parts. The first establishes the general framework for this comparative investigation by indicating the focus of the study (schools as entities), along with its analytical unit (the approach to evaluation), its methodology, scope, overall structure and content. The second part contains diagrams that provide a general outline of evaluation systems. These diagrams will enable readers who so wish to understand how the evaluation of schools is situated in relation to a country's entire system of educational evaluation. The diagrams may vary considerably from one country to the next both from the perspective of the evaluators and in terms of the components evaluated (whether pupils, teachers, schools, local educational providers or the education system overall). The second part of the introduction will also provide some insight into the position of each of the different countries vis-̉-vis the study as a whole.

School evaluation is often linked to issues of accountability, performance assessment, regulation and inspection, where the work of teachers and/or the functioning of the school becomes the subject of critique. School Evaluation with a Purpose explores the latest thinking surrounding external and self-evaluation in schools. Examining teacher professionalism, reflective practice and what really matters in education, it considers the key challenges around current evaluative practice and puts forward alternative methods of evaluation, placing reflective practice and teacher professionalism at its heart. Exploring the stories of evaluation and the practice of resilient schools and school leaders in five European contexts, the book aims to support and promote the agency of teachers, school leaders and students. This book will be of particular interest to school leaders internationally, researchers, master's students of Education and Education Leadership, and policymakers responsible for law enforcement in the field of school inspection.

This review, developed in co-operation with UNICEF, provides Albania with recommendations to help strengthen its evaluation and assessment system to focus on support for student learning. It will be of interest to Albania, as well as other countries looking to make more effective use of their evaluation and assessment system to improve quality and equity, and result in better outcomes for all students.