Schools - management and inspection

The Director of Education & Cultural Services is Gordon Ford.   Two Heads of Service, Moira Niven and Patrick Sweeney, deal with education and Gerry Fitzpatrick deals with cultural services.   Their management responsibilities together with the organisational structure can be found under 'Online Tools' on the right.  Each school is managed by a Head Teacher.

The School's HMIe Inspection

HMIe (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education) inspects all Scottish schools on a rolling basis.   After the inspection is complete, HMIe publish a report.   When assessing a school, inspectors consider evidence from a range of sources including:

• the school's self -evaluation
• performance information
• pupil's work
• lesson observations
• input from parents
• discussions with pupils and staff

The inspection report includes an overall assessment of the school's effectiveness, along with specific judgments on:

• attainment and standards in numeracy and literacy
• pupils' personal development and well-being
• the quality of learning and teaching
• curriculum provision
• the care, guidance and support provided by the school
• the leadership and management of the school

The judgments are made on a six point scale - Excellent, Very Good, Good, Adequate, Weak and Unsatisfactory.   Inspection reports also highlight what the school should do to improve.   Where a school is asked to make improvements, the school, along with the local authority, will prepare an action plan which indicates how they intend to meet the HMIe's recommendations.   The school is expected to use HMIe's recommendations as a basis for making improvements as quickly as possible.

Further information on all schools in Scotland, including local authority and independent schools, can be found at the Scottish Schools Online website.   It provides contact details, links to school websites where available, and statistical and other information for every school.  

In school year 2007/08, HMIe inspections of 8 primary schools and 2 secondary schools were published.  The full reports can be found on the HMIe website.   West Lothian aims to achieve outcomes of good, very good  or excellent in all key indicators of quality.   Our annual Standards and Quality report, available online, contains details of how we are performing against this target.