This chapter explores the issues of reliability and validity of inspection frameworks and methods, and challenges and tensions in inspection frameworks and methods. Validity is an important aspect of thinking about effective inspection system as invalid inspection systems may lead to flawed judgments which will misguide administrative…

This chapter introduces three categories of unintended consequences from school inspections: (1) intended strategic behaviour where schools manipulate the inspection assessment through window dressing, misrepresentation or gaming, (2) unintended strategic behaviour when schools narrow their educational practices as a result of the behaviour of the…

This chapter introduces the fundamental principles and concepts of school inspections. School inspections will be defined and distinguished from other types of evaluation, such as quality monitoring, internal evaluations and audit. The chapter will also present examples of different inspection practices across Europe and explain how these have…

This chapter introduces four mechanisms of change to explain how school inspections may lead to improvement of school quality and higher student outcomes, schools accepting and using inspection feedback, the setting of expectations around inspections standards and methods, voice, choice and exit of stakeholders to motivate school improvement, and…

This book presented the methods and modalities of effective school inspections, summarizing the current evidence base and discussing issues of validity and reliability of school inspections in relation to school effectiveness research. In our book we have focused on inspections of single schools which are currently dominating the landscape of both…

This chapter describes how Inspectorates of Education operationalize different inspection goals (control, improvement, and liaison) in their inspection indicator frameworks. The chapter provides an overview and examples of the indicators used across a number of countries and how these are incorporated in inspection frameworks to evaluate and…

Many efforts to implement and improve school inspections have been modelled on examples from high-income countries, and many studies on the effectiveness of such systems have also only been carried out in these countries. However, local contexts in low- and middle-income countries are very different from those in developed countries, and findings…

This chapter identifies and summarizes the findings from international empirical research on the impact of school inspections. A systematic literature review was undertaken to describe the empirical evidence on (positive) effects from school inspections in four categories: school staff intentions to improve and reflections on school quality,…

This paper addresses if, and to what extent, the current working methods of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education affect the governance of school boards in schools for primary education. A key facet of the working method is the inspection meeting with the school board. Drawing upon a large quantitative study (n = 244) we are able to identify some…

In many countries the need for education systems and schools to improve and innovate has become central to the education policy of governments. School inspections are expected to play an important role in promoting such continuous improvement and to help schools and education systems more generally to consider the need for change and improvement.…

School inspections are expected to have an impact on data use and improvement of schools. Schools are expected to generate data (e.g., self-evaluation reports and student achievement results) as part of the inspection process. This process, in turn, also generates data (e.g., inspection reports) for school improvement. The high-stakes context in…

This article uses a policy scientific approach to reconstruct assumptions underlying the Dutch Educational Supervision Act. We show an example of how to reconstruct and evaluate a program theory that is based on legislation of inspection. The assumptions explain how inspection leads to school improvement. Evaluation of these assumptions is used to…