Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 7 October 2014
516. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Education and Skills the procedure regarding evaluation of a school; and if a school may seek to be revaluated or must it wait until her Department schedules an evaluation. [38240/14]
Amharc ar fhreagraSchools are selected for an evaluation by the management of the Inspectorate in accordance with planned and risk-based approaches to inspection, and not in response to requests from individual schools.
The Inspectorate has moved from the cyclical evaluation of schools using a single inspection model to a planned annual inspection programme which targets the Inspectorate's resources more efficiently. This is supported by the recent expansion of the range of evaluation models deployed by the Inspectorate, to include short, one-day, unannounced inspections, more rigorous whole-school type evaluations, and follow-through inspections.
In general, the criteria used to select schools for evaluation include:
- The inspection history of the school (date of the last inspection visit and, where relevant, the subject(s) inspected)
- Size of school (to ensure spread across small, medium and large schools)
- Data from previous inspections, including data from short incidental inspections, whole-school evaluations and follow-through inspections
- Nature of recommendations made during previous inspections
- Availability of inspectors with the necessary skills as, for example, subject inspections at post-primary level are conducted by subject specialist inspectors
- Medium of instruction (to ensure that both Irish medium and English medium schools are inspected)
- School management and patronage type to ensure that schools from each sector are well represented.
Whilst the programme of inspection includes schools identified through the Inspectorate's risk procedures as likely to benefit from external evaluation, schools at all levels of quality of performance are also included. This allows the Inspectorate to recognise, affirm and disseminate very good and exemplary practice across the system through the publication of inspection reports.
