Law No. 9/2006, The Fundamental Law of Non-Tertiary Education System, stipulates that, “to ensure the education quality in schools, the education authority needs to implement systematic integrated evaluation or specific evaluation on schools, so as to provide them with reference information for improvement and development, as well as to plan the necessary auxiliary measures”, whereby the education authority carries out the integrated evaluation of schools.

As stated in the Five-Year Development Plan of the Macao Special Administrative Region (2016-2020), the Government will strive to “strengthen the integrated assessment of non-tertiary education and accelerate the establishment and development of a school self-evaluation mechanism.” In 2018, the pilot project of “the integrated evaluation of schools with school self-evaluation as the core and combined with external evaluation” (“School Self-Evaluation Pilot Project” for short) was introduced. From 2020 onwards, the new model of integrated evaluation will gradually be promoted to all schools.

The Integrated Evaluation of Schools is based on the principle of combining internal and external evaluations so as to enable schools to develop autonomously in a sustained manner, to improve school leadership, curriculum and teaching, student support, etc. In the long run, it will help promote teacher professional development, enhance students’ literacy performance, improve the education quality of schools, and make school characteristics apparent.