External school evaluation in Portugal: School directors’ views on its impact and effects

Abstract

In response to growing demands for accountability in public education, Portugal’s Ministry of Education has been developing a system for the external evaluation of K-12 schools. In its current form, schools are required to set up an internal evaluation committee that produces a report. After this, the school is visited by an external evaluation team, which consults documents, interviews people at different levels of leadership, teachers and students, but does not carry out systematic observations in classes. Stemming from a major research project evaluating the impact and effects of this process in Portuguese schools, this poster presents the results of a questionnaire survey sent to every school director in continental Portugal. The number of responses was 251 (31% response rate). The results show that the average view of the directors on the effects of external school evaluation is moderately positive. The greatest impacts are perceived to be upon documents defining the school’s strategy and upon the central leadership’s ways of acting. The further away school elements are from this nucleus (i.e., teachers, students, parents), the lesser the impact. Schools serving more problematic populations of students see the effects of the external evaluation more positively, especially regarding their own provision of educational services. Schools that have improved their evaluation ratings from the first to the second cycle of evaluation indicate that it has had more positive effects. These results demonstrate both the positive impact and the limitations of the current external evaluation system, and provide valuable indications for its future development.