All-through school inspections

Published 01/01/2017.  Last updated 09/01/2024
  1. ​​​​Arrangements for inspecting schools in Scotland
  2. Preparing for inspection
  3. Briefing for headteachers
  4. Guidance on issuing pre-inspection questionnaires
  5. Briefing for parents and parent councils

1. Arrangements for inspecting schools in Scotland

Through inspection, HM Inspectors aim to promote improvement in special schools and successful innovation that enhances learners' experiences as well as providing assurance to stakeholders. HM Inspectors focus on the quality of children's learning and outcomes and the school’s capacity to improve. HM Inspectors evaluate how well a school is performing in a range of key areas. They use quality indicators from How good is our school? (4th edition).. HM Inspectors carry out inspections using a variety of models. This includes a full model inspection which covers four QIs, and a short model inspection which covers two QIs.

2. Being ready for inspection

Briefing the inspection team on the establishment's view of its improvement through self-evaluation

Our inspections provide the opportunity for schools to show that they know themselves well and that they are using self-evaluation to focus on improving children and young people’s attainment and achievements and.

Before the inspection, the headteacher is asked to complete a brief self-evaluation summary form in consultation with staff and the education authority.

At the start of the inspection you are invited to use your completed self-evaluation summary form to brief the inspection team. You should set aside up to an hour for this meeting. This dialogue should provide the inspection team with a clear sense of your journey – where you’ve come from, where you are now and where you want to get to. It is important that you cover outcomes for all learners who attend your establishment. This meeting will be the start of an ongoing dialogue with the inspection team and would be helpful to the inspection team if you:

  • give a clear account of your establishment's strengths and aspects for development
  • demonstrate where the school is improving and show us how you know
  • identify the key sources of evidence which underpin your knowledge of your school's performance and improvement, and make these available
  • show how you prioritise areas for improvement.

Improvement through self-evaluation

Senior leaders and staff will most likely use How good is our school? (4th edition) to support self‑evaluation. This document outlines the six-point scale used to grade quality indicators. We ask that senior leaders and staff provide their own school evaluations against the six-point scale in the self-evaluation pro-forma that is requested prior to the start of the inspection.

3. Briefing for headteachers

Throughout the inspection, we shall engage senior leaders and staff in professional dialogue with the aim of supporting improvement.

The advice and support materials below have been designed to help senior leaders and staff to prepare for the inspection and to outline the activities which will take place during the inspection. It aims to answer some of the questions staff may have regarding the inspection.

Briefing note for headteachers of all-through schools

This briefing note aims to help staff to understand the inspection process of an all-through school.

PDF file: Briefing note for headteachers of schools and heads of early learning and childcare (ELC) settings (747 KB)

​Self-evaluation summary form

An inspection begins with an introductory meeting which builds on the school's self‑evaluation. Discussion with inspection teams will focus on how self-evaluation is leading to improvement. Inspectors will use the evidence the school provides in the self-evaluation summary form as a focus for these discussions.

(When downloading Word documents, you may be presented with a dialogue box asking you to log in. Press cancel and the file should download.)​

Word file: Brief self-evaluation summary form using the full inspection model​ (152 KB)

Child protection and safeguarding self-evaluation form

This form is used to record information about child protection and safeguarding. Head of settings are asked to return this with the pre-inspection documents. The Managing Inspector (MI) and/or delegated team member will discuss the information provided in this form with relevant staff during the inspection.

Word file: Child protection and safeguarding: self-evaluation (Part A) (148 KB)

Word file: Child protection and safeguarding: outcome of inspection (Part B) (151 KB)

4. Guidance on issuing pre-inspection questionnaires

Headteacher guide for issuing pre-inspection questionnaires

An important aspect of the inspection is for key stakeholders to be given the opportunity to provide their views of the school. To gather the views of children, young people, parents, staff and partners we ask the headteacher to direct stakeholders to a pre-inspection questionnaire.

Within the email notifying you of the inspection, you will find a number of links to an online survey which holds the pre-inspection questionnaires. The links you will receive are set out below.

Learners

Please make sure that learners have privacy to complete the questionnaires. You should reassure learners that once they have completed the survey, no-one in the school will see their answers. Inspection team members will not tell anyone about what a learner has written unless they are worried about the learner’s safety. In that case they will talk to the learner and pass it on to someone who can help. Where required, those learners with additional support needs should be helped to complete the survey.

Parents

All parents should receive the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire. Parents may complete a pre-inspection questionnaire for each of their children attending the school being inspected. The pre-inspection questionnaire asks parents to indicate if they shall be providing one response only or if they are providing one response for each of their children who attend the school.

As part of the inspection, members of the inspection team will meet with a range of stakeholders. Parents are asked within the pre-inspection questionnaire to indicate if they would like to meet with a member of the inspection team and, if so, to provide their contact details. The Inspection Administrator will contact a random sample of parents to invite them to the meeting.

Staff

All staff should receive the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire. We have created pre‑inspection questionnaires for the following broad groupings. A survey link will be provided for each staffing group as shown below:

  • school support staff
  • teachers
  • pupil support staff.

Partners

We define partners within How good is our school? (4th edition) to include all individuals or organisations that deliver learning and contribute to the life and work of the school. They may include community learning and development services, colleges, universities, employers, third sector, community organisations and libraries. All those who work in partnership with your school should be sent the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire.

Distributing the links

You should use the existing digital channels to inform these stakeholders of the inspection, the information that is available from our website and the appropriate link to the pre‑inspection questionnaire. When sharing the links it is important to include the date which all responses must be completed by. We usually refer to this as the date the survey will close.

Methods for sharing the links include: using internal email for staff/practitioners; adding the links to the school website (remember to remove when the survey has closed) for parents and partners; include the information within a group call or newsletters for parents, staff/practitioners and partners; connect with learners through Glow.

You are best placed to know the most effective ways of communicating and engaging with their stakeholders to ensure that as many as possible have the opportunity to provide their views about the school. We have found that some schools have, in addition to sending the links digitally, provided opportunities to parents to use the school's devices to complete the pre-inspection questionnaires. For example, some schools invited parents to use the library and ICT suite facilities and another invited parents to complete the pre-inspection questionnaire during the Parents' Evening.

We recognise that schools will want to encourage as many of their stakeholders as possible to complete the pre-inspection questionnaire. To support this, the Inspection Administrator can provide headteachers with a regular update on responses rates. Where, for example, the response levels are lower for a particular stakeholder group, headteachers can then send another communication which reminds and encourages more responses.

What will we do with the information we gather?

We will use an online survey tool, provided by Formic, which holds the pre-inspection questionnaires and responses.

  • Education Scotland will then store all responses confidentially on secure servers for a period of five years. Personal information provided by respondents will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
  • Education Scotland is subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information is available on our website.
  • Formic follows some of the principles of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Assistance may be required for those who use screen readers or keyboard-only controls.
  • If stakeholders wish to increase font size to help them complete the survey, it’s best to use the browser controls, for example, Internet Explorer offers options to increase text size via the view menu.

It is important that we protect the information that we gather through the pre-inspection questionnaires and that you and your stakeholders understand how we will do this.

  • We may use the information for statistical purposes but no individual responses will be identified. We may give headteachers a summary of the results of all the responses we receive.
  • Views will remain confidential, unless they raise specific issues, for example in relation to child protection. In these circumstances, they would be shared with headteachers and appropriate agencies.
  • We will then store responses confidentially on secure servers for a period of five years.
  • Personal information will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We are also subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information on privacy is available on our website.

Personal information will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We are also subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information is available on our website.

5. Briefings for parents and parent councils

Support and advice for chairperson of Parent Council

Gathering the views of parents is important to us during the inspection of a school. We consider these views carefully as part of the evidence during the inspection. We will want to know what the Chairperson of the Parent Council thinks about the school and how it is doing. A member of the inspection team will arrange to meet with the Chairperson of the Parent Council, as well as other parents, during the inspection.

PDF file: Support and advice for the chairperson of the parent council - full model (343 KB)

Briefing note for parents

This section aims to help parents to understand the inspection of a primary school and, where relevant, a nursery class.

What happens in the inspection of your child's all-through school?

Your child's school is to have an inspection to find out how well your child is being educated and looked after. HM Inspectors (HMI) will take account of the type and nature of the school and its learner's needs. The inspection will be carried out by a team of inspectors, Associate Assessors (AA) and a Lay Member (LM) working for Education Scotland.

Before the inspection

We gather the views of learners, staff, partners and parents using a pre-inspection questionnaire. Headteachers will be sent a link to the online survey by the school which provides information about the survey and how to complete it.

All replies will be treated in confidence unless they raise issues about the safety or health and wellbeing of children, young people or staff in the school.

Parents are invited to indicate if they would be available to meet with the inspection team during the week of inspection at the end of the pre-inspection questionnaire. We will contact parents to make arrangements.

An inspection team can be made up from our own inspectors along with others from similar organisations. Information given to us will be seen only by this team. We will not tell anyone else where our information came from unless the safety and wellbeing of a person is considered to be at risk.

During the inspection

  • We will visit classrooms/nursery playrooms, observe learning, and talk to staff and children/young people about their learning.
  • We may spend some time looking at your child's work and reading his/her reports.
  • We may work with your child as part of a small group or in a classroom/playroom.

After the inspection

  • At the end of the inspection or review, HM Inspectors will share the findings with the school and agree any follow up activity.
  • The inspection team will publish a letter for parents on the Education Scotland website.
  • Summarised Inspection Findings and the analysis of the pre-inspection questionnaire responses are also published on Education Scotland’s website.
  • Where HM Inspectors are confident in the work of the school and that the school has the capacity to continue to improve, no more visits are made in connection with the inspection.
  • In some cases, HM Inspectors will carry out a further inspection to support staff in making improvements.

The term 'parents' should be taken to include foster carers, residential care staff and carers who are relatives or friends.

Related links

School inspection reports - Inspection reports for schools and early learning and childcare settings in Scotland.

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All-through school inspections

Published 01/01/2017.  Last updated 09/01/2024
  1. ​​​​Arrangements for inspecting schools in Scotland
  2. Preparing for inspection
  3. Briefing for headteachers
  4. Guidance on issuing pre-inspection questionnaires
  5. Briefing for parents and parent councils

1. Arrangements for inspecting schools in Scotland

Through inspection, HM Inspectors aim to promote improvement in special schools and successful innovation that enhances learners' experiences as well as providing assurance to stakeholders. HM Inspectors focus on the quality of children's learning and outcomes and the school’s capacity to improve. HM Inspectors evaluate how well a school is performing in a range of key areas. They use quality indicators from How good is our school? (4th edition).. HM Inspectors carry out inspections using a variety of models. This includes a full model inspection which covers four QIs, and a short model inspection which covers two QIs.

2. Being ready for inspection

Briefing the inspection team on the establishment's view of its improvement through self-evaluation

Our inspections provide the opportunity for schools to show that they know themselves well and that they are using self-evaluation to focus on improving children and young people’s attainment and achievements and.

Before the inspection, the headteacher is asked to complete a brief self-evaluation summary form in consultation with staff and the education authority.

At the start of the inspection you are invited to use your completed self-evaluation summary form to brief the inspection team. You should set aside up to an hour for this meeting. This dialogue should provide the inspection team with a clear sense of your journey – where you’ve come from, where you are now and where you want to get to. It is important that you cover outcomes for all learners who attend your establishment. This meeting will be the start of an ongoing dialogue with the inspection team and would be helpful to the inspection team if you:

  • give a clear account of your establishment's strengths and aspects for development
  • demonstrate where the school is improving and show us how you know
  • identify the key sources of evidence which underpin your knowledge of your school's performance and improvement, and make these available
  • show how you prioritise areas for improvement.

Improvement through self-evaluation

Senior leaders and staff will most likely use How good is our school? (4th edition) to support self‑evaluation. This document outlines the six-point scale used to grade quality indicators. We ask that senior leaders and staff provide their own school evaluations against the six-point scale in the self-evaluation pro-forma that is requested prior to the start of the inspection.

3. Briefing for headteachers

Throughout the inspection, we shall engage senior leaders and staff in professional dialogue with the aim of supporting improvement.

The advice and support materials below have been designed to help senior leaders and staff to prepare for the inspection and to outline the activities which will take place during the inspection. It aims to answer some of the questions staff may have regarding the inspection.

Briefing note for headteachers of all-through schools

This briefing note aims to help staff to understand the inspection process of an all-through school.

PDF file: Briefing note for headteachers of schools and heads of early learning and childcare (ELC) settings (747 KB)

​Self-evaluation summary form

An inspection begins with an introductory meeting which builds on the school's self‑evaluation. Discussion with inspection teams will focus on how self-evaluation is leading to improvement. Inspectors will use the evidence the school provides in the self-evaluation summary form as a focus for these discussions.

(When downloading Word documents, you may be presented with a dialogue box asking you to log in. Press cancel and the file should download.)​

Word file: Brief self-evaluation summary form using the full inspection model​ (152 KB)

Child protection and safeguarding self-evaluation form

This form is used to record information about child protection and safeguarding. Head of settings are asked to return this with the pre-inspection documents. The Managing Inspector (MI) and/or delegated team member will discuss the information provided in this form with relevant staff during the inspection.

Word file: Child protection and safeguarding: self-evaluation (Part A) (148 KB)

Word file: Child protection and safeguarding: outcome of inspection (Part B) (151 KB)

4. Guidance on issuing pre-inspection questionnaires

Headteacher guide for issuing pre-inspection questionnaires

An important aspect of the inspection is for key stakeholders to be given the opportunity to provide their views of the school. To gather the views of children, young people, parents, staff and partners we ask the headteacher to direct stakeholders to a pre-inspection questionnaire.

Within the email notifying you of the inspection, you will find a number of links to an online survey which holds the pre-inspection questionnaires. The links you will receive are set out below.

Learners

Please make sure that learners have privacy to complete the questionnaires. You should reassure learners that once they have completed the survey, no-one in the school will see their answers. Inspection team members will not tell anyone about what a learner has written unless they are worried about the learner’s safety. In that case they will talk to the learner and pass it on to someone who can help. Where required, those learners with additional support needs should be helped to complete the survey.

Parents

All parents should receive the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire. Parents may complete a pre-inspection questionnaire for each of their children attending the school being inspected. The pre-inspection questionnaire asks parents to indicate if they shall be providing one response only or if they are providing one response for each of their children who attend the school.

As part of the inspection, members of the inspection team will meet with a range of stakeholders. Parents are asked within the pre-inspection questionnaire to indicate if they would like to meet with a member of the inspection team and, if so, to provide their contact details. The Inspection Administrator will contact a random sample of parents to invite them to the meeting.

Staff

All staff should receive the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire. We have created pre‑inspection questionnaires for the following broad groupings. A survey link will be provided for each staffing group as shown below:

  • school support staff
  • teachers
  • pupil support staff.

Partners

We define partners within How good is our school? (4th edition) to include all individuals or organisations that deliver learning and contribute to the life and work of the school. They may include community learning and development services, colleges, universities, employers, third sector, community organisations and libraries. All those who work in partnership with your school should be sent the link to the pre-inspection questionnaire.

Distributing the links

You should use the existing digital channels to inform these stakeholders of the inspection, the information that is available from our website and the appropriate link to the pre‑inspection questionnaire. When sharing the links it is important to include the date which all responses must be completed by. We usually refer to this as the date the survey will close.

Methods for sharing the links include: using internal email for staff/practitioners; adding the links to the school website (remember to remove when the survey has closed) for parents and partners; include the information within a group call or newsletters for parents, staff/practitioners and partners; connect with learners through Glow.

You are best placed to know the most effective ways of communicating and engaging with their stakeholders to ensure that as many as possible have the opportunity to provide their views about the school. We have found that some schools have, in addition to sending the links digitally, provided opportunities to parents to use the school's devices to complete the pre-inspection questionnaires. For example, some schools invited parents to use the library and ICT suite facilities and another invited parents to complete the pre-inspection questionnaire during the Parents' Evening.

We recognise that schools will want to encourage as many of their stakeholders as possible to complete the pre-inspection questionnaire. To support this, the Inspection Administrator can provide headteachers with a regular update on responses rates. Where, for example, the response levels are lower for a particular stakeholder group, headteachers can then send another communication which reminds and encourages more responses.

What will we do with the information we gather?

We will use an online survey tool, provided by Formic, which holds the pre-inspection questionnaires and responses.

  • Education Scotland will then store all responses confidentially on secure servers for a period of five years. Personal information provided by respondents will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
  • Education Scotland is subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information is available on our website.
  • Formic follows some of the principles of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Assistance may be required for those who use screen readers or keyboard-only controls.
  • If stakeholders wish to increase font size to help them complete the survey, it’s best to use the browser controls, for example, Internet Explorer offers options to increase text size via the view menu.

It is important that we protect the information that we gather through the pre-inspection questionnaires and that you and your stakeholders understand how we will do this.

  • We may use the information for statistical purposes but no individual responses will be identified. We may give headteachers a summary of the results of all the responses we receive.
  • Views will remain confidential, unless they raise specific issues, for example in relation to child protection. In these circumstances, they would be shared with headteachers and appropriate agencies.
  • We will then store responses confidentially on secure servers for a period of five years.
  • Personal information will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We are also subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information on privacy is available on our website.

Personal information will not be shared with any other third party organisation and will only be used for the purpose it was obtained in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We are also subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Further information is available on our website.

5. Briefings for parents and parent councils

Support and advice for chairperson of Parent Council

Gathering the views of parents is important to us during the inspection of a school. We consider these views carefully as part of the evidence during the inspection. We will want to know what the Chairperson of the Parent Council thinks about the school and how it is doing. A member of the inspection team will arrange to meet with the Chairperson of the Parent Council, as well as other parents, during the inspection.

PDF file: Support and advice for the chairperson of the parent council - full model (343 KB)

Briefing note for parents

This section aims to help parents to understand the inspection of a primary school and, where relevant, a nursery class.

What happens in the inspection of your child's all-through school?

Your child's school is to have an inspection to find out how well your child is being educated and looked after. HM Inspectors (HMI) will take account of the type and nature of the school and its learner's needs. The inspection will be carried out by a team of inspectors, Associate Assessors (AA) and a Lay Member (LM) working for Education Scotland.

Before the inspection

We gather the views of learners, staff, partners and parents using a pre-inspection questionnaire. Headteachers will be sent a link to the online survey by the school which provides information about the survey and how to complete it.

All replies will be treated in confidence unless they raise issues about the safety or health and wellbeing of children, young people or staff in the school.

Parents are invited to indicate if they would be available to meet with the inspection team during the week of inspection at the end of the pre-inspection questionnaire. We will contact parents to make arrangements.

An inspection team can be made up from our own inspectors along with others from similar organisations. Information given to us will be seen only by this team. We will not tell anyone else where our information came from unless the safety and wellbeing of a person is considered to be at risk.

During the inspection

  • We will visit classrooms/nursery playrooms, observe learning, and talk to staff and children/young people about their learning.
  • We may spend some time looking at your child's work and reading his/her reports.
  • We may work with your child as part of a small group or in a classroom/playroom.

After the inspection

  • At the end of the inspection or review, HM Inspectors will share the findings with the school and agree any follow up activity.
  • The inspection team will publish a letter for parents on the Education Scotland website.
  • Summarised Inspection Findings and the analysis of the pre-inspection questionnaire responses are also published on Education Scotland’s website.
  • Where HM Inspectors are confident in the work of the school and that the school has the capacity to continue to improve, no more visits are made in connection with the inspection.
  • In some cases, HM Inspectors will carry out a further inspection to support staff in making improvements.

The term 'parents' should be taken to include foster carers, residential care staff and carers who are relatives or friends.

Related links

School inspection reports - Inspection reports for schools and early learning and childcare settings in Scotland.

^ Back to top