1 Creation and missions of the Quality Assurance department

What led us to create the Quality Assurance department was a twofold need: to support our schools in implementing AFLEC’s educational project, and to monitor the preparation for the inspections of AFLEC schools located in the United Arab Emirates, conducted by the KHDA in Dubai and by ADEK in Abu Dhabi. These audits are carried out with reference to a prescribed framework covering educational areas, but also administrative areas relating to school life, school management, governance, as well as safety and hygiene… In short, the evaluation covers everything that concerns the life of the school: it is a 360-degree audit. When a school is inspected, it has only a short time to provide its self-evaluation against all the required items, accompanied by evidence, that is to say proof of what is claimed (for example, the measurement of pupils’ results and progress, by subject area, over several years). During the audit itself, the team of inspectors visits the
classrooms, meets the people responsible for each area and checks that what has been stated matches what they observe. At the end of the inspection, the school is “graded” on a scale ranging from “very weak” to “outstanding”, and a public evaluation report is sent to the school. The “grade” and the audit report naturally have a significant impact on the school’s attractiveness.

In order to support its schools as effectively as possible in preparing for the KHDA and ADEK audits, AFLEC has adopted the founding approach of these audits and made it a hallmark of its identity. From its creation, the Quality Assurance department put in place a system enabling the various schools to prepare well in advance for the visits of the evaluation bodies. This is long-term work, consisting of building the supporting documents for the self-evaluation of year N+1 as soon as the evaluation report for year N is received. In particular, in the area of data, pupils’ results are collected (at the start of the school year and then each term or semester) and analysed, which allows each teacher to know the level of mastery of a given skill achieved by each pupil in their class, and therefore to address any difficulties encountered. The approach also makes it possible to measure each pupil’s results over several years.

The Quality Assurance department is also responsible for monitoring the implementation of the various strands of AFLEC’s educational project. This subject is addressed during each of its missions, some of which are devoted to classroom visits to “measure in situ” the degree to which the key points of the association’s educational project have been implemented (points that are not necessarily examined by the KHDA or ADEK). Thus, the most recent mission, in March 2022, was devoted to classroom observation of the teaching of French and science, the adoption of well-being, the use of digital tools, and the functioning of middle management, to which I will return in a few moments. Following its visit, the mission made recommendations on each of these points and, in particular, proposed that compulsory training be introduced in secondary education, along the lines of that which already exists statutorily in primary education. This training, introduced at the start of the 2022 school year, is mainly intended to provide training in two related areas (well-being and differentiated instruction) and to contribute to each teacher’s professional development through exchanges of teaching practice initiated by peer-to-peer classroom visits. The training is compulsory because it is funded. One of the missions of the quality assurance department will be to monitor the implementation of this training in secondary education (alongside the training that exists in primary education).

2 Middle management

Within our network we have experts whom we regularly call upon to engage with their colleagues, in both primary education (on teaching in nursery or elementary school) and secondary education (on the teaching of Arabic, English…); these exchanges take place in person (through missions) or remotely (for which we use our training platform, FormAflec). I would add that since the start of the school year we have been fortunate to welcome to the Quality Assurance department Ms Souria LUNETTA, who last year was a primary education inspector (IEN). This policy of exchanges is also enriched by the regular visits of Mr Bernard MANUEL and Ms Elisabeth ZEBOULON, as part of the exchanges of teaching practice and professional development between the École Jeannine MANUEL and AFLEC.

3 Review and outlook

As far as middle management is concerned, the outcome is very positive. It is a system that fulfils its missions well: educational and subject-specific leadership is a reality that reassures teachers through the help it provides in preparing teaching sequences and assessments, to mention just these two points. In-service training provided internally within each school, well established in primary education, is being developed in secondary education. This in-service training is essential for us because, on the one hand, it contributes to everyone’s professional development and, on the other, through the “open classroom” scheme, it makes it possible to build genuine exchanges of teaching practice, a guarantee of trust between colleagues and of shared values within each school and, more generally, across the network.

The Quality Assurance department also aims to be responsive, and its missions adapt to current events. This year we will have two particular areas of focus:

  • Monitoring teachers’ in-service training.
  • A survey on the organisation of school time in primary and secondary education (one of the questions we are asking ourselves in secondary education is whether it would be relevant to change 55-minute lessons into 45-minute lessons in order to use the 10 minutes thus “gained” to teach “differently”; for example, four 55-minute French lessons would become five 45-minute lessons, one of which would be devoted to a grammar workshop, a spelling workshop…).

To conclude, and to borrow the expression used last year by a head of school, the Quality Assurance department is a friendly department, but, like any true friend, a critical friend that helps us stay on course.