Schools are not islands. They work with other schools, colleges, employers and a number of other services to improve the quality of the curriculum for learners, to provide them with the support which they need and to help them to achieve to their highest potential.
The framework of indicators in this edition of How good is our school? is used by a number of public services. Education authorities use the framework as it is described in Quality Management in Education to evaluate the quality of the service they provide across the range of their work. The same framework is used by youth workers, by social workers and by teams of professionals working in children’s services. Using the same framework provides a common language about quality which makes it much easier for everyone who works with children and young people to share their findings and to support each other in improving the experiences and achievements of young people.
HM Inspectorate of Education and other inspectorates are working towards using this common framework in all inspections. When HMI inspect schools, they will use a group of indicators selected from the overall framework. These indicators focus in particular on the outcomes and impact of the education provided by the school and the important factors which contribute to these.
The quality framework has been developed to be compatible with a number of quality models and awards, for example Investors in People, Charter Mark and the Excellence Model of the European Foundation of Quality Management, and can be used in conjunction with them. For example, the results of a Charter Mark assessment, and the evidence it was based on, can contribute to your evaluations using the quality framework, and vice versa.
The framework has been designed to be used at more than one level. For example, it can be used:
This means that the evaluations you arrive at in your school, and the evidence on which they are based, can also contribute to evaluations in other contexts. For example, they could be used in evaluating the quality of services to children within your neighbourhood. They could also be used together with evaluations from other schools, pre-school centres and teams to contribute to evaluations of the effectiveness of your education authority.