This article is personal and rather anecdotal as it is an attempt to sum up my experience of 30 years of Ofsted inspections. The key questions remain what they always were. How do you deal with the sometimes conflicting requirements of support and accountability, objectivity and impartiality, styles of inspection, reporting and grading? Perhaps…

The purpose of this study is to explore the implications of a standards-based curriculum for what constitutes knowledge in different teaching contexts. The research question is as follows: How is the logic of uniformity within curriculum standards recontextualised into actual teaching in different school environments, here focusing on the concepts…

The educational system in Ghana has undergone various reforms as a result of colonisation, changes in government and constitutional amendments. These reforms have been accompanied by changes in educational assessment programmes. This paper explored the history of educational assessment in Ghana, understanding how educational reforms, colonisation…

In South Africa, the scholarship of epistemic justice has taken on an historical gaze with higher education framed as a social institution that might ameliorate the historical traumas of colonialism. Undoing the legacies of colonialism has been framed as the democratisation of the knowledge project. Using the White Paper 3 of 1997 that posits…

This paper utilises the concepts of "post-performativity" and "the post-performative teacher" to explore the private school context in China. It does this by drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese language teachers and utilising metaphor analysis to highlight three recurring teacher identities that collectively constitute…

To afford school middle leaders meaningful opportunities to initiate change, we must provide them with the space and flexibility to engage with agentic and creative responses to policy and practice. Whilst we argue that the tensions identified in Bennett's seminal reviews persist, there may, nonetheless, be opportunities for school middle leaders…

Purpose: To assess the potential of a paper diary for strengthening accountability in public agricultural extension services. Therefore a paper diary called 'Diary for Agricultural Extension Officers' was developed and tested in Uganda. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study research approach was applied for the development and…

College governing boards are widely held to be the keystone of institutional strategy and the prime locus of support, challenge and accountability in respect of the actions of the senior Executive. Whilst there are many normative prescriptions about the conditions and arrangements required for effective college governance, relatively little is…

The academic capitalization in higher education has aroused much public attention with its impact on every aspect of universities. To survive in the market, universities in Hong Kong have been striving to build desirable images among stakeholders in public communication. Drawing upon critical genre theory and the notion of interdiscursivity, this…

There is a shift towards increased accountability and assessment in schools and this is echoed in an Irish context, with assessment a neglected area of study in teacher education programmes. The aim of this study is to explore teacher educators understanding of school-based assessment practices and how they prepare pre-service teachers to assess…

Systematic reviews have witnessed significant growth across many fields, including education. In this article, we outline the background of this growth, highlight the tendency to focus on methodological considerations, and propose a framework to support education researchers in preparing systematic reviews with broad impact. We draw on our…

This paper estimates the effects of a school accountability policy on year-to-year teacher mobility in publicly and privately managed low-performing schools in Chile. As school ranking depends on the institution's relative position according to a set of variables and their corresponding thresholds, we use a multivariate regression discontinuity…

In recent years a suite of policies and practices that are strongly influenced by efforts to make the work of educators and education providers more accountable, have had a powerful impact across the sector in settings such as Australia. In part, this goes some way to explaining why many working in the teaching profession report being dissatisfied…

Education in Afghanistan and Pakistan is characterised by indicators showing lack of mastering of reading, writing and mathematics literacy skills. To foster effective education systems and provide quality education, experts have encouraged and established various mechanisms of accountability. We conducted participatory workshops with 556 teachers…

Purpose: Improving and assuring the quality of higher education has become a key element of policy agendas worldwide. To this end, a complete accountability system has been developed through various evaluation procedures. Specifically, this study analyzes the perceptions of university teaching staff on the impact of performance appraisal systems…