Quality development at the school

Increasingly higher significance has been assigned to quality development at school for quite a few years. It refers to all areas of schooling and school life and it is connected with understanding of education in terms of education for sustainable development. Participation of learning and working members of school community is an integral part of the understanding of quality development.

In Germany Ministries of Education provide for example “Orientation Framework for School Quality” to schools in order to support their development. There are various quality areas stated and named in such orientation frameworks. Following belongs to the quality areas: “School´s own curriculum, teaching, performance evaluation, evaluation of lessons, supportive concepts, consulting and support, organization of schooling, participation of pupils and parents” (Hamburg model), as well as “outcomes and successes, learning and teaching, school culture, school management, teachers´ professionalism, objectives and strategies of school development” (Lower Saxony model). Quality areas provide schools with orientation and reference points for their qualitative further development. They proceed within their quality development for example pursuant to “steering cycle in the school”.

(Source: Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium (Hrsg.) (2006): Der Orientierungsrahmen Schulqualität in Niedersachsen, Hannover, p. 10)

Quoting from instructions for work with orientation framework inter alia (page 10): “It is recommended to a school that wants to improve quality of its work systematically by all means for the first time to restrict itself first to a few topics (considering the circumstances even to one topic) that “prey on their minds”, teachers are interested the most in and at the same time can be processed successfully within a manageable period”. At an interval of several years quality development at school shall be reviewed and evaluated by a school inspection appointed solely for that purpose.