Polycentric inspections of networks of schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Polycentric inspections of networks of schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; Quality Assurance; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

• Context/background of the project and objectives
This study looked at four countries (England, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria) which have, in various ways and degrees, seen the establishment of networks to coordinate educational quality and improvement, such as through Multi-Academy Trusts in England, networks for inclusive education in the Netherlands, area learning communities in Northern Ireland and a peer review network in Bulgaria.
This study analysed the ways in which educational networks can be held to account effectively; it provided an overview of models of inspections of educational networks across Europe and reported the findings of four case studies which provide evidence of effective ways to hold networks accountable for their performance and functioning.

• Number and profile of participating organisations;
This project included a research team from the Netherlands, England, Ireland and Bulgaria who closely worked with Inspectorates of Education in these countries, and with SICI, the European Association of Inspectorates of Education to implement the study and disseminate outcomes.

• Description of undertaken main activities;
The project was implemented in four phases as outlined in our application:
Phase 1: mapping four existing examples of inspections of educational networks (also called ‘polycentric school inspections’)
Phase 2: literature review and ex ante evaluation to understand potential effects and mechanisms of impact of inspections of educational networks
Phase 3: scoping good examples of inspections of educational networks across Europe (survey and document analysis of SICI profiles)
Phase 4: studying impact of four examples of inspections of educational networks (or: polycentric inspections) in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, England and Northern Ireland.

• Results and impact attained and long-term benefits;
Each of the four phases had specific outcomes and results, such as blogs, scientific papers, written and video narratives, data collection instruments, presentations to SICI and scientific conferences, a MOOC and an international symposium; all our outcomes and results were published on the project website: www.schoolinspections.eu. Our project website provides a complete overview of results attained, both main project findings as well as country-specific findings.

Our findings are also published in journals, conference handbooks, and incorporated in teaching (Mas in the respective countries, as well as in a short course, taught at the UCL Institute of Education to an (annual) cohort of 30 inspectors from various countries.

The study improved our understanding of 1) how educational networks are being developed across Europe and how these form part of a larger trend of network governance, and how they can potentially contribute to improvement of education, 2) how Inspectorates can effectively inspect networks and conditions for doing so (including roles and responsibilities, trust, involvement of stakeholders, specific methodology).
In Northern Ireland, our findings indicate that horizontal arrangements for the evaluation and inspection of the West Belfast ALC improved learning outcomes across the area; in Bulgaria the school network improved parental involvement in schools across the network, while both schools and the Sofia Inspectorate of Education developed their evaluation literacy and capacity through jointly engaging in self-evaluation, peer review and a thematic inspection. In England, our findings indicated how our case study MAT developed internal structures for quality control in response to Ofsted (school) inspections and monitoring of RSCs and we worked with Ofsted in developing their new framework for MAT reviews. In the Netherlands our findings suggest a lack of impact of inspections of cooperatives for inclusive education, where the framework increases bureaucracy and a preoccupation with the setting of internal organisation of the network and monitoring structures, instead of ensuring inclusive education across the region. Ongoing conversations with the Dutch Inspectorate of Education inform the further development of a more effective inspection framework.

Our findings suggest that inspections can have a positive impact on the development, functioning and performance of educational networks, but only when using bottom-up subjectivist approaches to inspection, focusing on network-level outcomes (instead of those of single schools), where stakeholders are involved in setting the agenda for the inspection and inspections are implemented in an environment of high trust and continuing support. Examples of effective inspections have been shared through our interactive map (http://www.schoolinspections.eu/interactive-map/), presentations at SICI (the European Association of Inspectorates of Education), the project leaders’ involvement in the OECD’s SEG (strategic education governance) advisory board, as well as through the aforementioned publicatio

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 406641,53 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON & Country: UK

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE
• SOFIISKI UNIVERSITET SVETI KLIMENT OHRIDSKI
• DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY