One of the main purposes of inspection is to help staff to bring about further improvement to the learning experiences and achievements of children and young people. Inspection will build on the establishment’s self-evaluation to effect further improvement. The starting point of an establishment’s inspection is its self-evaluation. Inspection teams will discuss with the school or pre-school centre the establishment’s strengths and areas it has identified for improvement. Inspection teams will be particularly interested in how the results of self-evaluation have been taken forward.
In these discussions, pre-school centres and schools do not need to use the HGIOS/The Child at the Centre six-point scale in order to report on the quality of their provision.
The following diagram illustrates some of the key aspects of the self-evaluation process and the link to inspection.
Self-evaluation will draw upon the evidence which the school or centre has already built up through its own provision. Self-evaluation will take account of the nature of the school, its pupil population and its context. Evidence can be collected from a variety of sources, such as questionnaire analyses and attainment data/information on children’s progress; from interviews and discussions with learners, staff, parents and other stakeholders; and crucially by observing learning and teaching.
The Scottish Government’s policy, exemplified in the report Getting it right for every child4, seeks to improve the wellbeing of all children and young people. Wellbeing is seen as a necessary requirement for children and young people to enable them to develop the four capacities within Curriculum for Excellence. It is characterised by the seven indicators of wellbeing — safe, nurtured, healthy, active, achieving, respected, responsible and included. A GIRFEC approach requires better working arrangements between professionals who work with children, a single system of assessment and access to one record for each child. Where action to support children and young people involves multi-agency activity, there should be one integrated plan and, ideally, the child and family should be involved in its development and implementation. These GIRFEC approaches should become embedded in the working practices of schools and pre-school centres and should be evident when making evaluations on how children’s and young people’s learning needs are being met.