Agency for quality assurance, evaluation and independence of schools
The AQS (Agency for Quality Assurance, Evaluation and Independence of Schools) was responsible for the external evaluation of all state schools in Rhineland-Palatinate . It was an independent organization in the department of the Ministry of Education, Science, Further Education and Culture (MBWWK) and assigned to the President of the Supervision and Service Directorate (ADD). AQS was based in Bad Kreuznach .
On behalf of the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Education, AQS regularly carried out an external evaluation at all publicly owned schools. The external evaluation is part of a comprehensive strategy of school quality development with the aim of giving schools impulses for sustainable improvement of teaching and school processes. School and teaching developments, and not control, are therefore AQS's mandate.
The basis for the external evaluation was the orientation framework School Quality of the Ministry of Education, in which the quality criteria for good schools and good teaching in Rhineland-Palatinate are described.
■ On the one hand, questionnaires, discussions, insights into lessons and document analyzes were used to obtain data.
On the other hand, school principals, teachers / job holders, pupils, parents and custodians and (in the case of vocational schools) partners outside of school were surveyed.
This approach made a decisive contribution to depicting the respective school in all its facets as balanced and realistic as possible.
After the school visit, the AQS team leader presented the most important results of the AQS visit at a feedback conference (i.e. in the presence of the staff, parents and student representatives) in the school. They form the starting point for further measures for teaching and school development and are the basis for the target agreements to be concluded with the school inspectorate.
On September 15, 2015, the Rhineland-Palatinate state government announced that the AQS will be dissolved at the end of the 2015/16 school year. Budget savings are cited as the reason for this.