School improvement and inspections

Creating highly effective schools in which all students can grow, learn, and fulfil their potential

Explore our current programmes

Students’ learning experiences are inevitably shaped by the norms and standards of the school they attend. We design and deliver evidence-informed school improvement programmes that support schools to grow, connect, and demonstrate quality at every stage of their development. From this extensive experience in raising school standards around the world, we know what makes a school effective, and how to support schools and ministries on their school improvement journeys.

We apply highly impactful, evidence-informed, and collaborative models to help schools – and school systems – improve their overall effectiveness and overcome specific challenges. We also help schools around the world to tackle specific classroom challenges, such as behaviour management, gender equality, and inclusion of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Our global reputation in inspection and accreditation is excellent, having authored and implemented inspection frameworks for governments, trained inspectors, and conducted international and national inspections. Our accreditation service also provides a progressive framework to help effective schools evaluate practice, plan improvement, and gain recognition for their achievements.

Impact stories

Discover stories of change from our work in school improvement and inspections around the world.

Transforming Zimbabwe’s school accountability system through a modernised inspection approach

Improving school quality through inspections in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Early career teacher teaching secondary classroom

Facilitating peer learning through the largest collaborative school improvement programme in the UK

Our 2025 impact review is now available to download and read online

Explore impact

Global expertise, localised reach

Our wealth of experience spans across the globe, from driving large-scale collaborative improvement in the UK to conducting school inspections to raise standards in the Middle East.

UK

In the UK, our Schools Partnership Programme has provided schools with a holistic approach to driving change for over a decade. This approach is one that is supportive and non-judgemental of the challenges schools need to address. Throughout the programme’s lifetime so far, we have had the privilege of working with over 8,800 school leaders and their teams, across more than 2,200 schools. We have also worked with over 60 Local Authorities across England and Wales to develop school improvement within their region.

Sub-Saharan Africa

On the TEACH programme in Zimbabwe, we have worked with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) on bringing in a more supportive and holistic approach to school inspections, in which inspectors become partners in school improvement, rather than enforcers. In this approach, inspectors provide constructive feedback aimed at progress in teaching and learning outcomes, rather than on procedural compliance.

Middle East and Asia

In the Middle East and Asia, we work with system-level partners to raise standards through inspections, accreditation, and accountability. We provide assigned consultant support and school quality assurance through our International Schools Quality Mark (ISQM) accreditation programme, and we are one of only three agencies authorised by the UK Department for Education to conduct British Schools Overseas (BSO) inspections.

In Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, we conduct private school inspections in partnership with the Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA), driving marked school quality improvements. We also conduct inspections for Dubai private schools in partnership with the Dubai Schools and Inspections Bureau (DSIB) - in 2025, Dubai private school students (whose schools we inspected) ranked in the top five globally for science performance and the top ten for mathematics. This is testament to the hard work, dedication, and commitment of everyone involved in the education sector in Dubai, as well as to the impact of the inspections and accountability processes we oversee.

Our current school improvement and inspections programmes

Schools Partnership Programme

ISQM school accreditation

Inspecting British schools overseas

Expertise

Policy into practice

Policymakers all over the world are grappling with the challenge of delivering quality teaching and learning at scale. It is one thing to build school infrastructure for access, but quite another to ensure there are skilled, supported, and motivated teachers in every classroom, with students ready to learn.