Self-evaluation can make a difference in the quality of education: dialoguing with John MacBeath

Abstract

At a time when the influence of schools external evaluations on national systems of education and on the public school and the quality of education becomes overwhelming, it is urgent to hear a reputable researcher who argues for the need to invest in critical and implicated self evaluation processes. John MacBeath, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge, and consultant for several international organizations, notably the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and International Labour Organization (ILO), has extensive experience and research on school evaluation and studies on school effectiveness and improvement. In this interview, John MacBeath refers to the European project developed in the scope of the Socrates program, untitledQuality Assessment in Schools, which led to the construction of a self-evaluation tool, the Self-Evaluation Profile (SEP). His defense of the relevance and indispensability of self-evaluation lays in the conviction that any evaluation must be able to understand the culture of the school, to listen to the voices of school actors – parents, students and teachers –, to give account of agreements and disagreements, which requires a time that a visitor / external inspector does not have. For John MacBeath, the school can only promote its improvement from the inside, by the reflective and critical work of all its members. No less important is the reference to the effects of PISA, since, instead of helping to dilute the distances between countries, it has inspired competition and exacerbated inequalities, creating a legion of no hopers among students.

Self-evaluation; External evaluation; Educational policies; International comparisons