The joint, regional, vision of the of external evaluation of educational institutions in the South Eastern Europe and Moldova has been formulated within the EQET SEE project and endorsed by all the relevant practitioners and policy makers in the field of quality assurance from the seven economies: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Moldova, North Macedonia and Serbia.

The document titled Guidelines and suggestions for optimizing (the impact of) external evaluation of institutions in the SEE and Republic of Moldova is available for download HERE.

These Guidelines and suggestions are a result of the joint work of more than 40 relevant stakeholders from the quality assurance agencies, national qualification authorities, vocational education centres, ministries of education and schools during the two Policy vision meetings organised in March and April 2022 within the project Enhancements in the quality of education and training in SEE – EQET SEE and its Quality Assurance (QA) component.

The document contains regional conclusions on the purpose of external evaluation in the SEE region and Moldova, relationship between external evaluation and internal (self-) evaluation, improvements of external evaluation needed for enhancement of quality culture, as well as the recommendations to be taken into account at regional national level within the scope of EQET SEE project to reach this vision.

It is a product of a fruitful discussion on fundamental topics related to external evaluation, such as: self-evaluation: how to make internal (self-) evaluation more stable at the school level and make schools embrace the process; role of external evaluation: what is its purpose, how to measure impact and how to achieve the purpose; external evaluation: how does it use the results of internal evaluation (for proportionality, or for other purposes); external evaluation: does it affect system developments, should it be used for system developments, and if yes, how.

This policy vision document serves to steer the activities of the QA Component of the EQET SEE project towards enhancements of the QA systems and external evaluation in pre-tertiary education in the SEE region and Moldova.