EASNIE’s Quality Assurance, Monitoring and Accountability (QAMA) activity held its final dissemination event on 6 March. The activity’s findings were shared through a webinar which introduced a practical tool to help countries to check, improve and account for education quality. Over 700 people joined the webinar from across Europe and beyond, including policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and school leaders.

The QAMA activity has explored ways to ensure quality assurance – how education systems ensure teaching and learning meet agreed standards, monitoring – the information countries collect, such as learner outcomes, attendance, inspection findings or feedback, and accountability – who is responsible for results and decisions, how those responsibilities are checked, and how people explain what they have done and why, within education systems. These elements are essential for education system quality and improvement.

The webinar introduced the QAMA Tree – a tool for quality assurance, monitoring and accountability. Verity Donnelly, a consultant for the activity, explained that many countries do not have one clear, joined-up way of checking education quality. The QAMA Tree is designed to help spot gaps in quality assurance and accountability systems and make roles and processes clearer.

The QAMA Tree helps countries map their existing quality processes (what is measured, who does it, how findings lead to change) and identify what is missing. It can be adapted to different national settings and can be used to look at the whole education system or to focus on one area, such as a school level, a specific process or a priority theme. It can also support discussion between stakeholders at different levels and with those in sectors outside education, so people share the same understanding and can plan on-going improvement.

QAMA’s Background and development report, which was also presented during the webinar, explains how the QAMA Tree was created and how it works. The accompanying Guidelines for use give practical examples of how to use the tool in different contexts.

Watch the webinar below.