Impact of school inspections on improvement of schools—describing assumptions on causal mechanisms in six European countries

Abstract

School inspection is used by most European education systems as a major instrument for controlling and promoting the quality of schools. Surprisingly, there is little research knowledge about how school inspections drive the improvement of schools and which types of approaches are most effective and cause the least unintended consequences. The study presented in this paper uses interviews with inspection officials and a document analysis to reconstruct the "program theories" (i.e. the assumptions on causal mechanisms, linking school inspections to their intended outcomes of improved teaching and learning) of Inspectorates of Education in six European countries. The results section of the paper starts with a summary of the commonalities and differences of these six national inspection models with respect to standards and thresholds used, to types of feedback and reporting, and to the sanctions, rewards and interventions applied to motivate schools to improve. Next, the intermediate processes through which these inspection models are expected to promote good education (e.g. through actions of stakeholders) are explained. In the concluding section, these assumptions are critically discussed in the light of research knowledge.

The Evidence Base for School Inspection Frameworks

“…hours (Ehren et al, 2013). According to De Grauwe (2007), this type of control is the oldest bureaucratic type of monitoring: checking that rules and regulations are respected.…”

“…Many of these frameworks are inspired by school effectiveness research according to Ehren et al (2013). Their comparative study of inspection frameworks in six European countries indicates a strong focus on educational processes such as opportunity to learn and learning time, achievement orientation, clear and structured teaching, challenging teaching approaches and orderly learning environment.…”

A conceptual model for research in performance standard policies

“…The actual configuration of system elements varies widely between countries (see e.g. Ehren, Altrichter, McNamara, & O'Hara, 2013); however, there are two dominant arrangements in Europe (which often exist side by side): school inspections on one hand and performance standards and comparative testing on the other.…”

“…It aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the processes and effects of newgovernance strategies by formulating a conceptual model elaborating the assumptions underpinning this policy (Ehren et al, 2013;Jones & Tymms, 2014); in particular, explaining the pathways that are thought to mediate between policy interventions and expected outcomes (Coburn & Turner, 2011a, p. 175) is useful. Such a model is intended to provide a rationale for deciding which elements of the policy and its implementation have to be attended to both by research and evaluation on one hand, and by policy formulation and implementation on the other.…”

“…Such a conceptual model may be • normative if it reconstructs the expectations and assertions for impact that underpin the proponents' versions of a reform (see e.g. Ehren et al, 2013), or it may be • empirical if expectations of impact have been tested and the model's elements, coordination mechanisms, and goals/results have been reformulated to reflect empirical findings (see e.g. Gustafsson et al, 2015).…”