School inspection has been widely employed by many countries to evaluate and strengthen government control over school quality. However, very few empirical studies have sought to improve the current school inspection criteria by uncovering factors that could influence education quality (Sun & Zheng, 2015) or address the practical issues in the applicability of the inspection standards in China (Cravens et al., 2012). A great quantity of evidence demonstrated that urban schools and key (high-performing) schools’ priority in educational resources allocation exacerbates inequity between schools in education quality (Zeng et al., 2007). Whereas, satisfying students’ different educational needs and improving the schooling process might account more for reinforcing educational equity than increasing physical inputs in the context of China (Zhu et al., 2017). Thus, a united and better evidenced national school inspection framework with a focus on schooling processes may be effective in narrowing gaps in education quality between schools. This study seeks to identify the gap in compulsory education quality between schools in Q city China by examining stakeholders’ perceptions on the importance of school inspection criteria in demonstrating educational quality. Their perceptions might be affected by school contexts related to socio-economic status and student intakes. This study mainly addresses two research questions: Are there any differences in the view of participants on the importance of school inspection criteria in order to demonstrate and improve education quality between schools? What are stakeholder perceptions on the policy context of education and the school inspection criteria that influence education quality?

This study focuses more on criteria regarding the selected concepts of education quality to supply an ultimate evaluative interpretation of school quality (Scheerens et al., 2003). A conceptual framework was constructed by critiquing and mapping the relevant school inspection frameworks formulated by OECD and European countries, the conception of education quality, and school effectiveness research based on the pre-set concept of education quality, including outcome, process, and equity. Education quality is often defined as the production of a requested outcome equivalent to school effectiveness (Levine & Lezotte, 1990). However, only using standardized tests but ignoring broader non-cognitive results cannot appropriately respond to educational goals (Luyten et al., 2005). It has been increasingly acknowledged among inspection frameworks of European and OECD countries that evaluation of students’ learning outcomes should extend beyond subject knowledge and skills in some designated areas and include broader non-academic outcomes, such as attitudes, critical thinking abilities, and social competencies (OECD, 2012). Also, educational quality is seen as a complex process where “trained teachers use child-centered teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skillful assessment facilitates learning and reduces disparities” (UNICEF, 2000, p. 1). Similarly, effective school-level conditions were estimated to facilitate effective teaching and lead to higher students’ achievement in a dynamic and effective schooling process (Kyriakides & Creemers, 2008). Some school effectiveness factors identified as promoting school quality are reflected in the inspection framework of European countries in terms of learning time, achievement orientation, structured teaching, school leadership, and orderly learning climate (Ehren et al., 2013). Regarding education quality, variations exist in different educational contexts, for instance, students from more disadvantaged schools were found to receive fewer opportunities to acquire valued forms of knowledge than students from schools with better economic conditions (Ross & Genevois, 2006). Thus, a successful and healthy education system acquires both equity and quality (OECD, 2012) to offer each child a high-quality education. In practice, control and assurance are often delivered as “access to education” in compliance with regulations and laws for the purpose of accountability (Ehren et al, 2013).

A questionnaire survey was administered in an economically-developed city Q in Shandong province, particularly for its higher level of balanced development of education in China. Ten junior high schools were selected, including three high-performing schools, four ordinary schools, and three low-performing schools. A 66% response rate was eventually achieved with 364 out of 550 questionnaires returned. There were six headteachers, 337 teachers, and 21 administrative staff responding to the questionnaires. Next, thirteen interviewees from three schools, including headteachers, teachers, city inspectors, and an education officer were selected for convenience and invited to attend the individual interview. Interviews were conducted in a low-performing and a high-performing school in the urban area and one ordinary school in the rural area in order to obtain a complete, in-depth, and practical understanding of school inspection and education quality based on the different school contexts. The questionnaire items derived from the previous literature include theories around educational quality, school effectiveness, and school inspection, the current inspection documents made by the EU and OECD, and national and provincial inspection documents from the Chinese context. Also, relevant questionnaire items on inspection criteria/content used in previous research have informed the design of survey questions, such as items related to classroom teaching and teacher professional development employed by OECD (2013), Thomas (2014), and ESF (2008). Additionally, the survey included questions concerning participants' demographic information, such as their school positions, as well as the region, type, and status of the institute which they are working for, in order to make comparisons between different schools and interpret the survey findings. In alignment with the research questions and aims, the interview questions sought to encompass aspects of the policy context of education and the school inspection criteria which might affect educational quality. In view of school effectiveness theory, school differences in student outcomes may be affected by different internal school factors and diverse school contexts (e.g., diverse school socioeconomic status and teacher quality). Thus, a one-way ANOVA was performed to compare the survey findings between schools. Next, a Bonferroni post hoc test was conducted to identify which school is different from the rest of the schools through multiple comparisons. For qualitative data analysis, the codes were selected and compared against the conceptual framework according to the deductive coding principle, which is followed by inductive coding when the existing theories were too limited to identify new codes from the transcripts.

This research highlighted equity as a key issue in terms of education quality, particularly concerning the gap in students’ academic performance between schools, which is linked to the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds of students’ families. Thus, it is more important to explore how schools can positively influence students and work to achieve social transformation and inclusion by compensating for students’ background characteristics (Sammons et al, 2017). Given that the gap in education quality regarding student academic performance between schools still hinders balanced development of education, it is essential for strengthening external accountability systems and constructing a feasible school inspection framework (Li & Zhu, 2016), in order to ensure students’ equal opportunities to learn in the schooling process. More importantly, the school inspectorates should devote time and effort to exploring the factors underlying the school context that affect the quality of school education to continuously optimise school inspection criteria. This research also provides new evidence from a low-performing school that students’ learning pressure was primarily driven by intense curriculum schedules, homework pressure, and extra curriculum tutorial classes. On the contrary, high-performing school students from the developed area have enough time to seek better academic achievements and all-around development, which further broadened the gap in education quality between schools. In opposition to participants’ perceptions on the underlined importance of developing students’ critical thinking and creative abilities, under the exam-oriented education system, students and stakeholders are liable to overlook the development of individuality, inquiry, and independent thinking abilities and routinise non-academic evaluations (Zhou, 2017). In this case, schools and educators, especially in high-poverty communities, need high-quality resources, training, and organizational support to be able to identify and address the many challenges their students face.

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