EERA: Charting The Rise Of Polycentric Evaluation

Research indicates that inspection models tend to be adapted when education accountability systems mature. Schools and their stakeholders develop evaluation literacy and innovation capacity to improve education on their own and thus have less need of being driven by top down inspections and reform initiatives (see Barber, 2004). Despite this a recent McKinsey report (2010) sparked a debate in many European countries about a lack of improvement in many education systems across the continent. The report argues that the education systems in many countries are ?good? but fail to improve to ?great? as schools are not aiming for higher achievement and fail to innovate their teaching and learning. In order to make this final but difficult phase ?from good to great? various inspectorates of education (e.g. the Netherlands and Northern Ireland) have begun to experiment with polycentric inspection.