HARIDUS-JA TEADUS MINISTEERIUM

Website: http://www.hm.ee/

The Ministry of Education and Research of Estonia is responsible for the planning of education, research, youth and language related national policies and, in conjunction with that, managing the fields of pre-primary, basic, general upper secondary, vocational secondary, higher, hobby and adult education, organising research and development activities, youth work and special youth work, and compiling drafts of corresponding legal acts.
 
In Estonia, The Ministry of Education and Research designs and exercises inspections, as well as analyses the results. In fact, the approach is even broader, the Ministry’s External Evaluation Department is responsible for the development and implementation of a quality system in general and vocational education as well as for monitoring and analysis of the results. This system of external evaluation has been in transition in every possible aspect, so they have experienced many different sides of evaluation. In the last decade the system has undergone significant changes and it is still in transition. In 2006 Estonia moved from comprehensive inspection to thematic inspection. This means that organization and the volume of inspection was radically reduced. In 2014 transitioning to risk-based evaluation started. They would like to share the experiences that they have gained from that process and also learn from the good practices of other countries to be able to implement their system more efficiently.