Mr. Gary Ó Donnchadha:

I thank Senator Moran for raising the issue. She had an eye to the future. A really robust quality assurance system must have both effective mechanisms within the school or organisation and robust mechanisms outside such as can be provided by external inspection. That is why since 2012 we have been investing a lot of effort in giving schools the tools for effective and robust self-review. We have launched very detailed guidelines and a standard cycle for reviewing teaching and learning in all schools, and we took a decision to invest some of our own inspection time in improving skills in the system with regard to school self-evaluation. Between November 2012, when we started on school self-evaluation, and now, we have visited 3,700 of the 4,000 schools in the system to speak directly to every teacher about school self-evaluation, because early on the school principals said to us in consultation that they are the converted. Embedding high-quality, robust self-evaluation requires that every teacher understands the concept and knows where to access the tools, and that there is a buy-in to the school's engagement with us. We have conducted universal coverage of the school system to make sure there is no doubt in the system that we have an expectation that effective school self-evaluation will be commenced in schools. It will take time because this has to embed itself in the management, organisation and life of the school itself. We envisage that in the next four, five or six years the balance between external inspection and the internal quality review - the school looking at its own assessment, outcomes data and practice - will work towards a complementary quality assurance mechanism.