Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 122: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if her Department's inspectorate has completed whole school evaluations and issued same to schools for comment, prior to these being made public; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13357/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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In accordance with the regulations on publication of inspection reports that I placed before the Houses of the Oireachtas on 31 January 2006, inspections commenced on or after 6 February 2006 will be published. The new regulations on publication will apply to 177 WSEs at primary level and 48 post-primary WSEs in 2006.

Since the regulations in relation to publication only apply to inspections commenced on or after 6 February 2006 and since there is a 14 week timeframe between the end of the in-school evaluation activity of WSE and the final publication of the report on the Department's website, no WSE reports have gone to schools for response as yet. In line with the timeframe, it is expected that up to 32 WSE reports at primary level and up to six WSE reports at post-primary level will be published by the end of June 2006. Some of these WSE reports will be sent to schools for factual verification in the next week.

The provision for a school response to the WSE report is new and I believe that it provides an excellent opportunity for the board of management of the school to respond to, and make observations on, the contents of the inspection report. More importantly, the response procedure will allow the board of management to set out how it will use the report in the context of the school's ongoing programme of self-evaluation, planning, and improvement. A school will be able to demonstrate how it is engaged in self-improvement and development in response to the school inspection report. I hope that all schools will avail of the opportunity to prepare a school response and to have the school's perspective on its own future development included as an appendix to the published WSE report.