Looking for a balance between internal and external evaluation of school quality: evaluation of the SVI model

This article describes the results of a study into the utility of the SVI model, a model in which internal and external evaluation are balanced. The model consists of three phases: school self-evaluation, visitation and inspection. Under the guidance of school consultants, 27 Dutch primary schools have built up two years of experience with the SVI model. The results show that the school leaders developed a positive attitude towards school self-evaluation and visitation. They found that both self-evaluation and visitation have improved their insight into the quality of the school. However, a content analysis of the school self-evaluation reports shows that the school self-evaluations are often of low quality. For example, it appeared that most of the self-evaluation reports do not provide answers to questions the schools have formulated at the beginning of the self-evaluation. Moreover, the teams of critical friends and the inspectors concluded that the school self-evaluations do have many shortcomings. Based on these results, we conclude that school self-evaluation is a very difficult task for most schools. It is therefore crucial that schools receive external support and that they build up experience with school self-evaluations over a period of years.