Quality Assurance in Alternative Education: Current Circumstances and Issues

Abstract

It is only recently that there has been any exploration of the possibilities of situating alternative schools, which are created by members of the public, as parts of the national education system. This is an issue that has emerged during and after the 1990s in the different countries being examined. At present, there is a small but definite number of countries that have discernible mechanisms for assuring the quality of alternative schools by means of official accreditation and inspection (evaluation). Here these mechanisms will be treated as methods of quality assurance (hereafter QA).