Making use of the external evaluation report in school’s work improvement

In Poland, since 2009, obligatory external evaluations have been carried out. The aim of the inspections is to provide schools with information useful for the improvement of their work. The evaluation may comprise all or selected educational standards listed in the Regulation on pedagogical supervision. The participants of the inspection are students, teachers, principals, non-teaching staff, students’ parents, representatives of local authorities and school’s partners, mainly institutions from the local environment that cooperate with the school. The report that is created after the evaluation is supposed to provoke reflection on how educational processes in school are perceived by various subjects and actions that would help improve them. It is, then, one of the important tools that can be used in contemporary data-based school management. The article discusses the results of the research concerning the usefulness of the report for school work improvement. It presents the educational standards as the object of the inspections, the opinions of principals and teachers on the usefulness of the external evaluation report and the results of other research carried out in this area