Scotland’s school inspectorate plans to carry out “at least 250 inspections across the school sector” from the start of the new school year in August, Tes Scotland can reveal. It also plans to carry out Scotland-wide inspections of inclusion and curriculum design.
School inspection in Scotland has been suspended since March 2020, when it was put on hold to ease pressure on schools at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Inspection and curriculum body Education Scotland attempted to restart inspection in January but it was accused of being ”deeply out of touch” with the reality facing schools and it decided to carry out “recovery visits” instead.
The return to routine inspection was announced in May but at that time Education Scotland did not make it clear how many visits it planned to carry out.
The return of school inspections in Scotland
Now Tes Scotland can reveal that it plans to carry out at least 250 inspections in the 2022-23 academic year, which will include a sample of 120 inspections focused on the following quality indicators:
- 1.3 Leadership of Change
- 2.3 Learning, teaching and assessment
- 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion
- 3.2 Raising attainment and achievement
The Education Scotland scrutiny programme for 2022-23 also reveals that there are “39 schools and settings which will require either a further inspection or a progress report from the local authority”.
And three national thematic inspections will be carried out:
- Early learning and childcare: progress with implementation of the expansion of funded ELC
- Inclusion: promoting positive behaviour
- Curriculum design
The number of inspections carried out in 2016-17 was 161; in 2017-18, 182 inspections were carried out; and in 2018-19, there were 252 inspections.
In 2019-20 Education Scotland aimed to carry out 250 inspections but, as a result of the pandemic and the subsequent suspension of inspection in March 2020, it carried out 169 inspections.
In the 2021-22 academic year routine inspection continued to be put on hold due to the pandemic.
In May, when announcing the return to inspection this coming academic year, Scotland’s chief inspector of education, Gayle Gorman, said Education Scotland was “aware of the ongoing challenges faced by local authority staff, education staff, learners and communities resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic” and that inspectors would take these challenges into account.
