Like most international school leaders, I have spent an inordinate amount of time on both sides of group level quality assurance processes. I have observed hundreds of lessons, scrutinised stacks of books, sat in on dozens of department and faculty meetings, and produced countless reports and evidence portfolios.
Discussing this aspect of the job with peers across the sector has revealed a clear consensus that spans groups and geographies: for the most part, QA processes provide genuine insight into the school’s strengths and areas for development, and both the school and the group benefit when they do. However, more often than most would care to admit publicly, the timing and nature of these activities are determined by the systems under which we operate rather than the genuine and present needs of the team.
In my experience, though some are designed explicitly for audit purposes, the vast majority of QA frameworks are written in good faith. But intent and design are different things. Group level processes of this kind typically exist long before most of the individual schools are founded. They are embedded in cooperative venture agreements and form part of a value proposition that is commercial as well as educational. The investor needs assurance that the brand standards it has paid to license will be maintained, and the home school needs to know its name and reputation are protected.
And yet, the founding leadership team is yet to be hired. The first student likely won’t be enrolled for years. Nobody has walked the corridors or experienced the culture.
The compliance trap
When staff do arrive, they are usually introduced to the QA mechanism as part of their induction. It is a foregone conclusion; an obligation to a contract that they had no hand in writing. If you are fortunate, your system will have been developed with input from other international campuses in the group. If not, it will be little more than a transposition of what is used by the home school in its very different context, or the invention of a director at head office. For those at the coalface, that can make it feel more like compliance than support.
Regardless, the fundamental question asked is whether the school is doing what it promised and living up to the name above the door. Some parts of the answer are straightforward to ascertain. Are the policies in place? Are lessons being planned and delivered according to the agreed framework? Are the academic outcomes up to snuff? Observation cycles, work scrutiny, outcome data, and documentation reviews can tell you whether the school is meeting the group’s basic standards. Part of their appeal is that they are semi-objective, auditable, and easy to encode in a commercial agreement. They therefore become the default tools.
Notice, too, that these are the activities most likely to make staff feel the process is about testing them rather than supporting them.
The direct cultural cost of staff feeling monitored is compounded by an opportunity cost. Time spent writing plans, collating evidence, and producing documentation is time not spent in classrooms, in corridors, in the conversations that shape a school’s culture. It is easy for leaders to dismiss disquiet about such things as complaints about admin and paperwork. In reality it is often much deeper than that. These educators came to the profession for students. Asking them to invest significant time in something else, from which they see little or no direct benefit, becomes a real source of resentment for many.
I noted at the outset that QA, done well, generates real value for both the school and the group. That is true. But those benefits are rarely felt by the team that carries the weight of the process. Rectifying that is the difference between QA done to a school and QA done with it.
Educators already know what works
Educators have long understood the value of formative assessment: assessment that is itself one of the most powerful teaching tools available, but only where the feedback is clear and constructive, is genuinely acted upon, and informs what comes next. The same principle applies to group QA. Unfortunately, many groups implement only a very basic version of it, providing a report with recommendations and directing the school to incorporate them into its next development plan.
The more valuable version is working alongside the school to develop and implement improvements, not conducting observations, handing over a report, and returning the following year to check on progress. That requires more from the group: a larger team, sustained involvement with middle leaders as well as SLT, and a real commitment to supporting teachers rather than simply reviewing them. It means taking the whole staff body with you, not just communicating with those at the top.
We already have a model for this in our own practice. The IB Primary Years Programme builds co-constructed success criteria into its pedagogy as a matter of principle. We trust seven-year-olds to help set the standards against which their own progress will be measured. So why would we withhold it from the experienced teachers and leaders whose practice is under review?
Part of the reason for the disconnect is structural. Feedback frequently travels only through senior leadership. The Principal receives the unabridged report; Deputies hear the headline findings; teachers and middle leaders, whose practice has just been observed, may hear about it second, third, or even fourth hand. Sometimes their only access is a copy of the report that has been circulated. A process experienced as an observation followed by silence is not a formative one, whatever the framework document says.
Working with the school, not simply reviewing it, means the findings need to be discussed with the people who can act on them. It means school staff are involved in shaping the questions the review will ask, not just answering the ones the group has already decided to pose. It means the process generates dialogue rather than judgement. And the staff must not feel that the group’s role ends for the year. What the school team needs from group leadership is not an assessor. It is a thinking partner: one that helps them ask the challenging questions they cannot always ask from the inside, and works with them on what to do about the answers.
Aligning interests
A school team that feels the group is genuinely invested in their ability to give students the best possible education is a stronger brand asset than one performing under audit. Not because they get good results or are rated ‘outstanding’, but because they feel part of something and want to give of their best for it.
Evidence of student outcomes and personal development, gathered through a process built around honest inquiry, is more convincing to sophisticated parents than an inspection-style report they have learned to read with scepticism. And a QA process designed to surface problems early, because it asks real questions rather than validating predetermined conclusions, is better commercial protection than one that produces clean reports until something goes badly wrong.
Those who decry the profit-driven nature of international education often point out that the commercial relationship between the investor and the education partner naturally leads to a competing interest with the school’s teachers and students. In truth, that needn’t be the case, at least when it comes to quality assurance. I would argue that a process designed to serve the people in the building first and foremost will serve those with commercial interests far better than one that works the other way around.
Many of the hours I have put into group QA have been well spent, and they have shaped how I approach this work. The most valuable thing I have taken from them: when the group arrives with real curiosity and stays engaged beyond the report, everybody benefits.