Schools produce an annual Standards Quality and Improvement Plan (SQUIP), as a record of progress in line with local and national priorities for the coming year. The Standards Quality and Improvement Plan should be shared in an accessible way with all stakeholders and will be uploaded on the school website.
Self-evaluation with staff, parent and pupil involvement should inform the Standards Quality and Improvement Plan. This can be through questionnaires, focus group discussions and feedback through representatives on the Parent Council. Schools use national toolkits such as ‘How Good is Our School’ to support this self-improving system, collaborating with peer Head Teachers and the Quality Improvement Team.
Key to self-improvement is the importance of regular and rigorous evidence based internal and external evaluation to further inform improvement. Self-evaluation activity must be planned for, so that a range of evidence can be considered when working with stakeholders to review:
- How we are doing?
- How do we know?
- What are we going to do now?
This continual reflection and learning will help inform which areas of improvement should be looked at in greater depth. This should always be undertaken in partnership with parents, children, and young people and this will be required to ascertain a baseline of current practice in this area to support improvement.
Each school produces a handbook containing information about the school. This is available on school websites or on request, from the Head Teacher.
Education Scotland is a Scottish Government executive agency responsible for supporting quality and improvement in Scottish education. Inspection reports can be found on the Education Scotland website.
The Care Inspectorate look at the quality of care in Scotland to ensure it meets high standards. Where they find that improvements are needed, they support services to make positive changes. The services covered include pre-school nursery classes, crèches, after school clubs, playgroups and care homes for children and young people. Schools and centres delivering these services are inspected regularly by the Care Inspectorate.
You can find out more about the Care Inspectorate and any regulated service via their website. If you want to make a complaint about a registered day care service you can contact the Care Inspectorate in writing or by telephone.