In exchange for the autonomy which they have been granted, schools are required to evaluate the quality of the education they provide. Undertakings of this kind  such as school self-evaluation - demand knowledge and skills from schools which cannot be simply pulled out of a hat. Moreover, it is unclear what quality aspects need to be taken into account or which criteria should be applied in order to assess the quality of self-evaluations. There is a need for a so-called meta-evaluation, whereby the quality of self-evaluations is assessed. At present, however, there is no generally accepted set of criteria for describing the quality of a self-evaluation. We need to work towards creating a set of instruments for meta-evaluation (to be used by both schools and government). Once this is operational, a tool set of this kind must enable us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of schools with regard to self-evaluation. The present article reports on an intensive case study of the way in which self-evaluation processes are implemented in three Flemish secondary schools and of the results that these processes have yielded. We have formulated the following research questions: (1) ‘Which indicators can be used to operationalize the quality of a self-evaluation?’ (2) ‘To what extent were the self-evaluations conducted in the schools studied of good quality?’ (3) ‘How can the differences in the results of self-evaluations be explained?’

Harrington and Harrington (1994) describe quality as ‘complying appropriately with the expectations shared by those involved’. This point of departure is a response to the idea that a self-evaluation can be directed towards very different expectations depending on the conceptions of the individual school concerned. This study sets out to inventarize existing expectations and to look at how these indicators can be used to operationalize the quality of a self-evaluation.

In addition, we also want to explain differences in the results of self-evaluations. A number of research findings support the expectation that the quality of a self-evaluation process is strongly determined by how that self-evaluation is carried out. These self-evaluation-related characteristics are researched in this study using the concept ‘self-evaluation as a policy act’. Empirical evidence shows that policy implementation processes are more effective the more closely they comply with the following characteristics: providing professional and personal support for team members (Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995); ensuring that stakeholders have an input in decision-making processes (Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988); coordinating the actions carried out as part of the self-evaluation with activities in other policy domains (Wikeley, Stoll, & Lodge, 2002); using efficient communication strategies (McBeath, 1999) ;and, as a team, having shared objectives with respect to the self-evaluation process (Potter, Reynolds, & Chapman, 2002). It is further emphasized that self-evaluation can only work if team members have a positive attitude towards it (McBeath, 1999). Creating an awareness of the usefulness and value of self-evaluation is, therefore, a precondition for achieving a successful self-evaluation (Schildkamp, 2007).

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