Eureka! Institutional Repository

The improvement of the educational system and the provided education in general, has been widely discussed the last decades, from both the responsible scientific field and some international organisations such as OECD, EFQM and EU. The above mentioned organisations have been involved in the past and continue till present to get involved with that field, as they aim at the proper quality assurance and respectable provided education. The main aim of this dissertation is to discuss the Quality Assurance Methods in the English educational system and more specifically in the Special Education Needs field. Those Methods consist of the external and the internal evaluation. The evidence of the former can be used as supplementary to the latter one, in order to present a sufficiently valid self -evaluation. The head teacher is responsible for the conduction of the school’s self- evaluation. On the contrary, regarding the external evaluation, responsible is the organisation of OFSTED, which follows some procedures that are clearly defined to the Inspection Handbook. All schools owe to be aware of the Inspection Handbook given that is handed out to them. The research questions are four. Firstly what are Quality Assurance Methods for the schools in the UK. Then how OFSTED’s inspection and self evaluation procedures contribute to the Assurance of Quality in the education system. Finally they are examined teachers’ views and attitudes towards those methods. Τhe research method is the individual interviews and the population of the research consists of the head teacher of the school and nine more teachers. The research concludes that both head teacher and teachers have a positive attitude towards the Quality Assurance Methods in the educational system and they seem to understand the importance of them.