4 ABSTRACT OF THE CSI ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 | Draft translation Foreword by the Chief School Inspector The Annual Report of the Czech School Inspectorate for the 2014/2015 school year presents a summary of findings gathered through inspection activities on the state of initial education and the education system as a whole. The obligation of the Czech School Inspectorate to submit annual reports is anchored in the Education Act (Act. No. 561/2004 Coll.).Since 2013 The Czech School Inspectorate has undergone some important changes which are centred round the improvement of quality of its inspection activities. The outputs of the Czech School Inspectorate should not only provide objective feedback, they should also assist in improving the quality of education in schools and school facilities. The main change lies in the shift from formal inspection checks to evaluation of teaching and learning processes. These changes are particularly motivated by the desire to provide schools and school facilities with practical methodological support which ought to contribute to the continuous improvement of the quality of education for every child, pupil or student. Since 2013 The Czech School Inspectorate has also striven to fulfil another important task: creating such methods, processes and procedures, which in addition to their use in the evaluation of education processes conducted by the Czech School Inspectorate, should also serve as practical tools adopted by individual schools. The school year 2014/2015 was marked by the completion of the National Quality Framework in Education which defines the model of the Quality School. The Quality School model includes criteria for evaluation of conditions, course and results of education; methodologies of inspection activities and a set of forms for recording evaluated and controlled information and data relating to education. Besides, the Czech School Inspectorate has prepared a set of new tools for evaluation of support and attainment in reading, mathematics, science, language, social, and information literacies. All of these tools are a further contribution of the Czech School Inspectorate to an ongoing discussion about what quality in education means and signifies. All the mentioned tools are also available for the use of schools and school facilities as well as for the participants in education such as school founders or teacher training universities. Another form of methodological support provided by the Czech School Inspectorate lies in linking the external and internal evaluations of individual schools. Furthermore, during the school year 2014/2015, the Czech School Inspectorate completed development and implementation of new information systems under the InspIS, as for example a system for electronic evaluation of educational achievement; a system used for monitoring and evaluation of school educational programs or a web platform for school presentations which enables sharing information with the public. All these systems are publicly available and free of charge.