Inspection and its contribution to practical evaluation

Abstract

Summary Increasing emphasis has been given of late to the importance of inspection as a means of monitoring and evaluating education and training provision. For example, we have seen the publication of reports of Her Majesty's Inspectorate and a significant widening of the remit of their inspection activities. In the training field an entirely new inspectorate ‐the Training Standards Advisory Service ‐was established by the Manpower Services Commission in 1986 to inspect the Youth Training Scheme. Most recently of all, local education authority advisory services have been given an enhanced inspection function as a consequence of the Education Reform Act 1988. Despite these developments, the methodologies of inspection are ill‐understood. Although inspection is undeniably a means of evaluation, it is almost completely neglected in the now substantial literature devoted to evaluation. This is paradoxical, given that inspection (particularly as practised by HMI) is arguably the principal means of evaluating the education service and providing us with knowledge of it. This article reviews the recent literature on education and training inspectorates and relates it to the broader field of educational evaluation. A case is made for regarding inspection as having some of the characteristics of the accreditation, connoisseurship and transaction models of evaluation. A broad interpretation of inspection is offered and assessed against criteria of accountability, methodology, logistics and impact. The aim is to locate inspection within a sounder conceptual framework than has been attempted hitherto, and to provide the basis for a dialogue between the two communities of educational evaluators and inspectors. Such a dialogue is needed if the manifold tasks of practical evaluation required in the future are to be realized.

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