ABSTRACT

This chapter suggests that the planning, implementation and assessment of the cross-curricular themes are complex, that they go to the heart of an institution and that they affect people as well as curricula. There is clearly a necessity for ongoing evaluation of the changes and innovations if genuine improvement is to take place. The need to evaluate is underlined by OFSTED where it is made clear that evaluation and self-evaluation feature as important focuses of inspection. This chapter sets out a range of issues in planning and implementing evaluations; each institution will have to interpret these issues and tailor them to its own contexts and purposes. The balance of formal and informal evaluations was seen to be a function of the purposes of the teams. Though different teams would have different evaluation tasks the chapter demonstrates that there was a commonality of evaluation criteria, purposes, focuses and methods and indicated what these were.