Brussels, 14/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Eurydice network operates in the education and training field and on 13 January, published a report on quality assurance in Europe. Improvements in quality within the education systems is one of the four major goals that European countries have set themselves and are part of the 2020 strategic education and training framework. Schools are the building blocks of these systems and their assessment is an important instrument for controlling and ensuring their quality, as well as education, in general, explains the report. This report analyses the different structures involved in school assessments, as well as the way these are organised in compulsory primary and secondary school teaching throughout EU member states, as well as Iceland, Norway, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. It particularly examined the two main kinds of school assessments: external evaluation, carried out by those who are not part of the school staff in question and internal evaluation, which is mainly carried out by members of the school personnel. The report contains country specific descriptions and a comparative analysis of school assessments in Europe.
The main Eurydice conclusions are as follows: 1) 26 European countries carry out external assessments. This kind of evaluation examines many different aspects of school activity, such as educational and administrative tasks, pupils' results at school, the quality of teaching and respect for the curriculum; 2) the main follow-up stages involved in external evaluations are identical in all European countries; 3) corrective action is the most common follow-up resulting from external evaluations (more prevalent than disciplinary action and improvements to the education establishment in question image); 4) the majority of countries publish their final external evaluation report (with the exception of the French-speaking community in Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Cyprus for lower secondary schools, Hungary, Austria and Turkey); 5) internal evaluation is compulsory in 27 systems and if this is not the case, it is generally recommended (except in Bulgaria and France at a primary school level, where it is not compulsory or recommended); 6) almost all countries, apart from Bulgaria, provide support to schools when they carry out their internal evaluations; 7) many countries use internal evaluation results carried out by the schools to finalise their external evaluation; 8) education system stakeholders play an important role in the evaluation process at both internal and external levels. This process is highly recommended by the European Parliament and European Council. (IL)