Feedback of performance indicators: a tool for school improvement?: flemish case studies as a starting point for con-structing a model for school feedback

Abstract

Due to a trend towards more autonomy and more decentralization, schools must be involved in a continuous process of improvement. Therefore, accurate and comparable data on school performances are needed. In this respect, the Flemish educational system takes a quite particular position in the international context, since it has no central examinations. As such schools have to rely upon other sources of information. Recently, the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS-R (Third International Mathematics and Science Study studies) studies did provide all participating schools with information on their individual performances. This article firstly describes the rationale behind these school reports and their content. Based on a profound reflection on these two cases a model for school feed-back is developed. The major aim of the model is to consider the conditions that have to be in place in order to make sure that a particular set of indicators may attribute effectively to successful quality control and improvement by the individual school. We will argue that in order to successfully achieve that goal the model has to meet some general and some technical requirements.