Background
The Standards in Scotland’s Schools Act (2000) sets out an improvement framework which required education authorities to set and report on local improvement objectives which were explicitly linked to national priorities. It was within this legislative context that the Review of Provision of Educational Psychology Services in Scotland was published in 2002, making a number of recommendations, including the need for EPSs to have ‘…a more formal framework of evaluation which incorporates self-evaluation, peer evaluation and inspection…which takes full account of the views of children, young people and parents.’
It was within this legislative context that ‘Quality Management in Educational Psychology Services’ (Quality Management in Local Authority Educational Psychology Services 1: Self-evaluation for Quality Improvement) was developed and implemented, specifically to support EPS to prepare and plan for inspection by His Majesty’s Inspector of Education (HMIE), and also to ensure that their improvement priorities were nested within Local Authority priorities, and therefore contributed to national priorities for improvement.
The form and function of external scrutiny and validation for EPSs has evolved over time, including participation in wider Education Authority inspections (INEA), the Validated Self-Evaluation (VSE) process (Guidelines for Validated Self-Evaluation – Support and challenge for educational psychology services in driving improvement), and most recently in Scottish Attainment Challenge authority inspections. The culture of self-evaluation for both local and national improvement is welcomed, valued, and well embedded in EPSs.
Purpose of self-evaluation
The aim of this framework is to provide an updated and systematic structure which will support local authority EPS in their drive for continuous improvement through self-evaluation.
EPSs offer unique support to local authorities through a wide range of functions, to enhance the teaching, learning and wellbeing of all pupils, with a specific focus on improving outcomes for those young people with a need for additional support.
Self-evaluation of EPSs is central to effective continuous improvement and should assist in the creation of learning systems that enhance practice. High-quality self-evaluation within psychological services should support organisational learning and focus on improving the impact of the service for all children and young people. This is achieved through the delivery of five key functions outlined in the Review of Provision of Educational Psychology Services in Scotland (Currie Report).
Principles of effective self-evaluation
Effective self-evaluation must be owned by the service, be flexible to the context, build on existing good practice and lead to targeted action. Good practice in self-evaluation suggests that to be effective, it should be:
▪ embedded into the culture of the organisation
▪ rigorous, comprehensive, systematic & transparent
▪ focused on identifying strengths and areas of development
▪ based on a wide range of evidence
▪ a process that involves a wide range of stakeholders and service staff
▪ a process that leads to targeted actions and improvements
▪ recorded and reported
▪ a continuous systematic process as opposed to a one-off event.
It must also be clear about the questions it is trying to address.
This framework is built on best practice from a range of sources, including previous iterations of EPS self-evaluation structures, and the structure of the 2015 Education Scotland framework, How Good is our School – 4th edition (HGIOS 4).
The 2007 self-evaluation framework for Educational Psychology Services, Quality Management in Local Authority Educational Psychology Services (HMIE, 2007) set out a set of six high-level questions to evaluate the performance and quality of the work undertaken:
▪ What key outcomes have we achieved?
▪ How well do we meet the needs of our stakeholders?
▪ How good is our delivery of key processes?
▪ How good is our management?
▪ How good is our leadership?
▪ What is our capacity for improvement?
No single source gives sufficient evidence to be used in isolation.
HGIOS 4 translates this into three themes for schools:
▪ How good it our approach to leadership and approach to improvement?
▪ How good is the quality of the care and education we offer?
▪ How good are we at ensuring the best possible outcomes for all our learners?
Each of these themes are underpinned by a number of Quality Indicators, which in turn are supported by a series of highly effective practice statements which are used to structure the gathering of evidence, in terms of quantitative data, feedback from stakeholders, and observation of practice.
Implementing effective self-evaluation
Continual improvement is central to the work of an EPS and should be a systematic process that is embedded within the work of the service. It should involve all key stakeholders and employ a variety of method of collecting data. This triangulation of data and the analysis of what this means should provide a clear link to service improvement actions.
The key questions underlying any approach to self-evaluation are:
• How are we doing?
• How do we know?
• What are we going to do now?
To support EPS to systematically address these questions, this self-evaluation framework will build on the models above, and ultimately focus on: ‘What is our capacity for continuous improvement?’
This will be addressed through three key themes:
▪ Leadership – how good is our approach to leadership at all levels?
▪ Service Delivery – how good is the quality of service we provide to all stakeholders through our service delivery processes?
▪ Successes and Achievements – how good are we at improving outcomes for children and young people?
Key Documents
New Additions to the suite of materials you have to support this process are as follows:
The subgroup has developed a draft structure for the first meeting of the Quads.
Agenda for ASPEP Collaborative Improvement Quads 2025 – initial meeting
Please use this to structure your first meeting, but of course feel free to adapt it to your own needs/timings.
We have also developed a framework for a two-phase report written by each service over the first 24 months of involvement in the Collaborative Quads:
- October 2026 (12 months in) Phase one report which is about the improvement activity so far of the service Imp LA EPS in Scotland – Phase 1 report structure
- October 2027 (24 months in) Phase two is about the difference the activity made, and how you know – the evidence Imp LA EPSs in Scotland – Phase 2 report structure
In relation to the proposed reports, the sub-group felt that it would be helpful at the start of this process to have a plan for how services will document and report on the work they do as part of Collaborative Improvement. In the original survey of ASPEP members, services identified that having a final report on the process and outcomes was something they felt was valuable as this report can be used by the service with their own Education Service Management, elected members, whoever they want to – in order to highlight the work the service has done, the activity and the impact.
Providing a structure/format for this will hopefully not only help support the collaborative process to lead to targeted actions and improvement for individual services, but it will also support services to develop their own report on the process, without this becoming an onerous task. The service has ownership of the report, as per the ADES process.
Our proposal is that each LA EPS does a short report using the same formats (attached), firstly on the implementation, and then 12 months later reporting on impact. These reports would take into account each service’s own context (for their own use), then each LA EPS sends their report to our group, this would support the subgroup to develop a thematic analysis and short ASPEP/SDEP endorsed national report.
The revised Collaborative Improvement Document, making reference to the two-phase report and the role of sub-group in writing an overview report which could be shared with national partners,
Collaborative Improvement Proposal – August 25
The EPS Self Evaluation Framework was updated in December 2025 and can be downloaded here.
To support the use of the framework, and in particular guide services in gathering evidence within the quality indicators, other self-evaluation tools can be used, including the Anti-Racist Self-Evaluation tool and the ASPEP Guidance on Implications of the National ASL Review.