Inspection of Secondary Schools
Briefing notes for parents
This section aims to help parents to understand the inspection of a secondary school.
What happens in an inspection of your child’s secondary school?
Your child’s secondary school is to have an inspection to find out how well your child is being educated and looked after. HM Inspectors (HMI) will take account of the type and nature of the school and its young peoples needs. The inspection will be carried out by a team of inspectors, Associate Assessors (AA), and a Lay Member (LM) working for Education Scotland.
The inspection published letter will highlight what the school does well and where it needs to improve. It will answer the following questions.
• How well do young people learn and achieve?
• How well does the school support young people to develop and learn?
• How well does the school improve the quality of its work?
Before the inspection
You may receive a confidential questionnaire so that we can see what you think about the school. We will also ask staff to complete a confidential questionnaire. All the replies we receive will be treated in confidence unless they raise issues about the safety and welfare of young people or staff in the school.
Using information from the questionnaires, we will contact a sample group of a few parents who will be invited to meet with a member of the inspection team.
An inspection team can be made up from our own inspectors along with others from similar organisations. Information given to us will be seen only by this team. We will not tell anyone else where our information came from unless the safety and wellbeing of a person is considered to be at risk.
During the inspection
• We will visit classrooms, observe learning, and talk to staff and young people about their learning.
• We may spend some time looking at your child’s work and reading his/her reports.
• We may work with your child as part of a small group or in a classroom.
After the inspection
• We will publish on our website a letter for parents and send an electronic copy to the education authority or Board of Governors, where appropriate to the chairperson of the Parent Council.
• If necessary, the secondary school, with the support of the education authority or Board of Governors, will amend its development plan to bring about any improvements that the letter says are needed.
• In some cases, we will carry out a continued engagement visit to support the school to make improvements or gather information about good practice.
The term 'parents' should be taken to include foster carers, residential care staff and carers who are relatives or friends.