School Review for Improvement: Challenges Led to an Evolving Process

• In Event: Virtual Roundtable Session 3
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Transforming Schools and Classrooms: Leadership, Literacy, and Technology in Diverse Educational Contexts

Proposal

The National Education Policy (Ministry of Human Development, 2020) provides expectations for infrastructure, school leadership, teaching, and curriculum contributing to quality education. Supporting continuous self-improvement of schools across India has been challenging related to quality education as described by the National Education Policy. Adhyayan Education Services has been grappling with supporting schools in continuous improvement for over 10 years. This paper addresses “How has the school review process evolved for supporting continuous improvement?”
The Adhyayan Quality Standard (AQS) was developed from international expectations of what good looks like in schools across the world (e.g., Mourshed et al., 2010) and contextualized for schools in India guided by the National Education Policy. The AQS was originally developed to assess quality of education (Wheeler et al., 2008) through school self-review with external validation. The AQS was used for school reviews across India ranging from schools with limited resources to schools competitive internationally. The AQS and sequence of implementing the school review remained the same across schools while expectations of performance were modified to local school contexts. Rangarajan et al. (2025) describe a framework addressing environments (policy, school, and community) across dimensions (inclusion, relevance, and participation) that allows for flexibility in contextualizing the process across schools.
Initially, school reviews involved a school-based team of stakeholders and a team of external experienced educators (Authors, 2017). Both teams used the same methods of collecting evidence to score performance on the AQS, followed by dialogue reconciling differences in scoring. This was challenging, as the two teams often used evidence differently for judging performance. Discrepancies in team judgments on performance indicators were sometimes far apart (Authors, 2020).
Two ways this process evolved over 10 years of implementing school reviews include edits to the AQS language describing performance indicators, and increased collaboration among school-based review teams and external assessors. The process evolved to collaborative teams by embedding external assessors within school-based assessor teams. External assessors could provide support for what good looks like in other schools more seamlessly throughout the review process, using the school’s context.
The impact of AQS and the process of school review has been studied over time (Authors, 2015; Authors, 2017; Authors, 2020, Authors, 2025a,b). Ongoing analysis of data from school reviews continues to inform the school review process and performance indicators in context across the dimensions of inclusion, relevance, and participation (Rangarajan et al., 2025). This process has been used in multiple school contexts and can be contextualized to schools in other countries. The intent of this school review process is to support schools in examining the quality of education, and empowering them to take action in areas that need improvement. A culture of continuous improvement ultimately applies to the school reviews and the assessment tools and processes for school review. The roundtable discussion will afford opportunity for discussion around implementing school review.

Authors

• Susan L Hillman

• Kavita Anand, Adhyayan Quality Education Services Pvt.ltd.

• Spokey Wheeler, Adhyayan