The international schools’ sector has grown dramatically in recent years. The range and type of schools that define themselves as ‘international’ is complicated by the variety of contexts.  Among the thousands of international schools that call themselves ‘British’, there are some that are formally recognised by the Department for Education (DfE) in England under the British Schools Overseas (BSO) voluntary inspection scheme (DfE, 2016). School inspection providers, that are approved by the DfE, accredit qualifying British international schools and publish a report on their findings making the schools comparable to independent schools in England. The formal recognition of BSOs by the British government situates these schools uniquely among the international schools’ sector.

This paper is based on a qualitative phenomenological inquiry that explores the evaluation experiences of BSO principals from six different countries. The research question is: “What are the evaluation experiences of BSO principals?”. Themes and interpretations are drawn from data that is gathered in semi-structured interviews conducted directly with the principals. Survey responses, document analysis and comprehensive field notes as well as the views of a number of experts in the field are also used. The findings indicate that BSO principals are evaluated for a variety of reasons in a range of settings, where evaluation methods are influenced by how the school ownership is structured, by the competencies in evaluation ability and by how the results are handled. The findings also point to some challenges to the overall BSO voluntary inspection scheme.

This paper sets out to advance the study of BSOs, which are a unique segment of the international schools’ sector. Some strengths of the study include its exploratory nature, which is significant for national and international school leadership and for the evaluation of principals. It is hoped that this paper might prove helpful to the international schools’ research community and also provide, for the first time, an aid towards defining part of a rapidly developing international schools’ sector.

This paper is based on an exploration of the evaluations of British School Overseas (BSO) principals (O'Sullivan, 2021). The sample of BSO principals was drawn from a number of sources that included the DfE in England, British international school membership associations and from approved accrediting inspectorates. Following a thorough search in 2018/19, during the timeframe for this research, 162 accredited BSOs were found in 47 locations around the world. The methodology used in the research included the triangulation of multiple points of observation that is necessary for validation purposes (Creswell & Poth, 2018). The research included visiting the contextual locations of some of these BSO principals and included document analysis, which aims to harvest an interpretation of an issue based on the critical reading of relevant documents found in relation to the context (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014). The document analysis included the examination of transcripts from the semi-structured interviews that were conducted with the BSO principals and an examination of inspection reports from 162 BSOs that were accredited during the research timeframe. Government policy documents, inspection policy guidance documents, corresponding emails, transcripts of audio notes and written field notes that included records of conversations with BSO experts, school membership association executives and BSO staff were also examined. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted using Braun & Clark’s (2013) six phases of thematic analysis. The subsequent analysis of the emerging themes helped to provide sufficient evidence to also create a working definition for the BSO as a legitimate international schools’ actor.

The findings in this inquiry show that the ownership and governance of British Schools Overseas (BSO) have a major influence on the evaluation experiences of BSO principals. Different variants of BSO ownership that are revealed in the investigation show that the ways that the BSO principals are evaluated depends on these contexts. In the procedures that are used for the evaluation of the principals, the methods that are used for evaluation by their school authorities influence these BSO principals’ perceptions of their own evaluations. The influences of BSO principals over their own evaluations also feature in the findings. The way the evaluation results are used illuminates some challenges for the BSO sector in how evaluations are presented and formally recorded.

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