Briefing the inspection team on the establishment’s view of its improvement through self-evaluation
Our new inspections provide the opportunity for pre-school centres and schools to show that they know themselves inside out and that they are using self-evaluation to focus on improving all the achievements of young people in line with Curriculum for Excellence. When self-evaluation evidence is robust and convincing, we use it as part of the inspection evidence. It can also help identify good practice and innovation that Education Scotland may wish to look at in more detail as part of our continuing engagement after the inspection has been completed.
Before the inspection, you are asked to complete, in consultation with your education authority, a brief (no more than 3 sides of A4) self-evaluation summary form. In it, you are asked to set out the key strengths and areas for development/next steps in the context of the following 3 key questions.
• How well do children/young people learn and achieve?
• How well does the school support children/young people to develop and learn?
• How well does the school improve the quality of its work?
This completed form will act as the basis of discussions with the team on Monday afternoon, including the selection of ‘areas for focused attention’ which the inspection team will consider as part of the inspection.
At the start of the inspection you are invited to use your completed self-evaluation summary form to brief the inspection team on the impact of your approach to improvement through self-evaluation. You should set aside up to one hour for this meeting. It is important that you cover outcomes for all learners who attend your establishment. This meeting will be the start of an ongoing dialogue with the inspection team about your establishment’s performance and improvement. This dialogue should provide the inspection team with a clear sense of your journey – where you’ve come from, where you are now and where you want to get to. Time is short and you will need to stick to the ‘high ground’. It would be helpful to the inspection team if you:
• give a clear account of your establishment’s strengths and aspects for development;
• demonstrate where the school or centre is improving and show how you know;
• identify the key sources of evidence which underpin your knowledge of school/centre performance and improvement, and make these available; and
• show how you prioritise areas for improvement.
Evaluating your establishment
You may well use How good is our school? The Journey to Excellence: Part 3 or The Child at the Centre as part of school/pre-school self-evaluation. You probably also use the six point graded scale. Because the inspection team is required to make independent evaluations using five of the quality indicators, your own evaluations against the six point scale are not used in the inspection process and are not required by the inspection team. Indeed, the inspection is not a process of ‘validation’ of grades awarded through self-evaluation. The inspection will provide an overall evaluation of the quality of the school’s provision. The first two key questions (above) will be answered clearly in the report and will be followed by text which explains our answers. For the third question, "How well does the school improve the quality of its work?", we will provide an expression of confidence. We will also indicate any continuing engagement activities we might have with the school.
Inspection Advice Notes
Education Scotland Inspection Advice Note (August 2011)
This advice notice opens up in a new document and sets out an adjustment in expectations, in line with national implementation expectations, for our evaluation of QI 5.1 (Curriculum) and QI 5.9 (Improvement through self-evaluation) for inspections which are announced from August 2011.