HM Inspectors of Schools / HM Inspectors of Education (HMIE)

HMIE guides and reports relating to a range of early years issues.

HMIE guides
HMIE reports

HMIE guides

Guide to Charter Mark for Scottish Pre-school Centres and Schools

The Charter Mark is intended to function both as a standard for customer service and as a quality improvement tool.

This section links to a series of self-evaluation guides in PDF format. To view these documents, you will require Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

A Guide to Charter Mark for Scottish Pre-school Centres and Schools

The Guide shows how centres can build preparation for assessment against the Standard into their established self-evaluation procedures. It also describes the kind of practical support that education authorities can give establishments which have decided to work towards the Standard (2004).

Checking the Evidence

This section of the Guide details the criteria for gaining a Charter Mark. It explains what the assessor is looking for and gives examples of the kind of evidence pre-school centres and schools could provide (2004).

Exemplars and Illustrations

Exemplars and illustrations to support schools and pre-school centres in assessing their performance against the Charter Mark standard. Includes evidence submitted in Charter Mark applications, as well as examples of assessors' feedback and action plans made to address feedback (2004).

Practical Tools for Self-evaluation in Pre-school Centres

This contains a series of grids allowing staff in pre-school establishments to measure their performance against the Charter Mark criteria (2004).

Practical Tools for Self-evaluation in Schools

This series of grids allows school staff to assess their performance against the criteria for Charter Mark (2004).

Health Promoting Schools

The Health Promoting School

One in a series of guides to self-evaluation for pre-school centres and schools, this builds on the advice given in the publications 'How good is our school?' and 'The Child at the Centre'. It shows how the relevant National Care Standards can be applied when evaluating the effectiveness of an establishment as a health promoting school or centre (2004).

The Health Promoting School - The Role of Local Authorities and their Partners

Describes the role of local authorities in leading health promotion within their local areas, promoting partnership working, and ensuring that the development of health promoting schools is embedded in service planning, school planning and community planning (2004).

HMIE reports

The Quality of Pre-School Education in Registration Inspections in Scotland 1998-99

Second national report on quality of pre-school education. Covers 279 pre-school centres (70 from the voluntary sector, 163 from the private sector and 46 from the local authority sector) inspected for registration in 1998-99 (2000).

Standards and Quality in Scottish Pre-school Education 1997-2001

The report summarises the findings of 1400 inspections of local authority, independent, voluntary and private pre-school education provision carried out by HM Inspectors between 1997 and 2001. The messages are overall very positive (2002).