Assessing cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes has become a corner stone in the processes of quality development in a school system. In Austria, regular centralized assessments of students’ competencies form the basis for quality development in schools in the primary and lower secondary sector. Hereby, the most vital part is professional, cooperative work in improving and developing the quality of schools and teaching. How processes like this can work in schools has been described in form of reference frameworks (Helmke, 2004; for Austria: Wiesner, Schreiner & Breit, 2015). The core parts of the model for quality development in schools can be supported by empirical evidence (Schreiner, Wiesner, Breit & George, 2018). The local school authorities play an important role in this process building the bridge between school administration and the schools and find themselves in a double role between support, accountability and pressure (MacBeath, 1999). In order to fulfil this role in the context of evidence-oriented school development also school supervisors need to have evaluative judgement (Boud, Ajjawi, Dawson, & Tai, 2018). To elaborate on this, problem-centered group interviews with members of the local school authorities were undertaken. They were conducted as part of a workshop with almost the entire school supervision. For this contribution, 14 group discussions of about one-hour length each including in total more than 50 individual participants are available according to the logic of the convenience sample (which comprises about a third of all Austria school inspectors. The analysis focus lies on the content (Meuser & Nagel, 2005) and is based on content-related topics and statements scattered through the group discussions (Strauss & Corbin, 1996). On the basis of these interviews this contribution elaborates function, role, and responsibility of the local school authorities in the process of evidence-oriented quality development in schools as well as the needs that arise from these. Drawing together evidence from these group interviews, accompanying research, working groups etc. shows a strong need for possibilities to actively work with the school data. In addition, support in identifying successful strategies for analyzing data of schools within a region, for interpreting results and for using this kind of evidence within their role in the quality development process is required. Taking these needs into consideration, a tool for analyzing school data and a corresponding workshop concept for members of the local school authorities are presented.

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