Abstract:

The approaches to quality assurance are various, based on different contexts and different cultural backgrounds. While some professionals support norms and standards, and meeting the officially-claimed requirements seem to be the goal of their efforts, the others consider enhancement as the right way towards quality. Within the common project with the group of researchers of Porto University, the Slovak team of researchers decided to focus on the quality issues concerning external and internal evaluation of primary and secondary schools. Quality assurance plays an important part in educational institutions which are ready for their professional reflection resulting in changes and improvement. Based on the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, the process of self-evaluation should be consistent with external evaluation. The main focus of this article is to compare the steps that have been done in the country and the results achieved from those procedures. Based on a comparative analysis, the paper presents similarities and differences in Portugal and Slovakia.

Keywords:

External evaluation, internal evaluation, questionnaires.