Recent Developments in the Scottish Process of School Inspection

Scottish education has been going through a period of rapid educational change. This paper describes some of the approaches being adopted by HM Inspectorate of Schools both to hold the educational system accountable and to support its further development. It provides an account of the outcomes which are considered central to the inspection process, the ways in which inspections are subsequently followed up and the impact of the inspection process on schools. At the same time, the paper considers the strategies which have been pursued in recent years to create a ‘quality culture’ in Scottish education. These have included work on the features of ‘effective’ schools, the wider sharing of the criteria being used to inspect schools, the introduction and support of approaches to development planning and further work on potential performance indicators