This statutory report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from October 1, 2024, through March 31, 2025. The audits, investigations, and related work highlighted in this report are products of OIG's mission to identify and stop fraud, waste, and abuse; and promote…

This article exposes the fear that is at the heart of the Ofsted inspection process. It presents a challenge to Ofsted's Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman. She must tread carefully if she is to reform Ofsted and our broken accountability system.

Federal Student Aid (FSA), a principal office of the United States (U.S.) Department of Education (Department), is required by law to produce an annual report, which details the organization's fiscal year financial and program performance. The Federal Student Aid FY 2024 Annual Report (Annual Report) is a comprehensive document that provides an…

School inspections are a key component of the accountability system in many education systems, including England. The judgments and reports produced through these inspections are widely used by parents when they are choosing a school for their children. But should they be? This paper presents new evidence on this issue. We illustrate how parents…

This chapter focuses on the governing work of Swedish school inspectors with regards to the role and function of knowledge. As professionals, inspectors are situated as relays and brokers of policy standing in contact with both the political arena and practice arenas. School inspectors use and produce knowledge and they rely on, search for,…

Improving the quality of education is a permanent concern for national policymakers. In that regard, a growing number of education systems have implemented a monitoring system where pupils have to take standardised tests at regular intervals during their school career (OECD, 2013). This article aims to offer food for thought to the readers of…

Due to national and international policy drivers The Dutch Inspectorate of Education is reforming its supervision with a mission to promote school improvement in all Dutch schools. One of the chosen mechanisms to achieve this is the provision of feedback by inspectors to school leaders, special educational needs coordinators, and teachers…

COVID has highlighted significant weaknesses in how the education system in England is currently managed and resourced. England needs to build a more resilient education system post-pandemic. The Institute of Education's project, "Learning Through Disruption," set out to explore what headteachers, teachers, other school staff and parents…

This briefing note is intended to prompt discussion on how to repair the fragilities in the education system that COVID has revealed. Over the length of our research project we have seen a gulf open up between government policy announcements and primary schools' experiences of the crisis on the ground (Bradbury, 2020). Our data show teachers, head…

This executive summary highlights research findings regarding the potential for school quality reviews to assess and promote a broader set of outcomes than are currently being measured in most districts and states. These outcomes include a deep understanding of content as well as the ability to use that knowledge to think critically to solve…

The Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA), previously named the Veterans Administration, has been providing veterans' educational assistance (GI Bill®) benefits since 1944. Since 1947, State Approving Agencies (SAAs) have been an important component in the administration of GI Bill benefits, along with the VA, educational institutions, and training…

Systems to periodically evaluate the performance of K-12 schools are, broadly speaking, of two kinds: "inspection," the paradigm of England's OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education); and "accreditation," originally developed nearly a century ago by what are now the U.S. regional accreditation agencies. In the past decade…

Evaluating schools has become a contentious issue in many countries. There seems to be a broad and growing consensus that some form of evaluation can on the one hand play a significant role in school improvement efforts, and on the other is also required to provide a reasonable level of public accountability appropriate in democratic societies.…

Examines English school inspection before and since 1993 reforms, observations procedures that some schools have adopted, and procedures of various colleges. The balance of accountability and support for improvement varies depending on the details and culture of inspection. In the United States, some experiments with inspection are occurring, and…

This semiannual report to Congress summarizes the activities of the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the 6-month period ending September 30, 1997. The OIG gave Congressional testimony regarding the modernization of student-financial-assistance-information programs, the Loan Consolidation process, the Federal Direct…