The Inspectorate of Education:

1 September 2009: the new Inspectorate of Education

The new Decree on Educational Quality of 8 May 2009 explicitly defines the schools as primarily responsible for their own quality.
For the Inspectorate this Decree implies changes both in methodology as in the internal organization.

Method

The Inspectorate transfers form an integrated to a differentiated inspection.

The inspection teams differentiate when determining a unique audit focus for each school, centre or academy at the end of the preliminary enquiry. During the preliminary enquiry the inspection team gathers all available information in order to make an assessment of a school’s quality. The team examines some aspects of that assessment during the audit phase and ends the inspection with an inspection report and an advice.

The core task of the Inspectorate is unchanged: her advice to the Government indicates whether a school, centre or academy meets the conditions of approval and subsidising and funding.

Organisation

The Flemish Government places the Inspection at the disposal of the Agency for Quality in Education and Training (Agentschap voor Kwaliteit in Onderwijs en Vorming - AKOV).

There is only one office of inspector and the subdivision in educational levels and corps no longer exists. This also applies to the Inspectorate’s management which consists of one Chief-inspector and 9 Coordinating inspectors.