One of the most important reasons for the use of external evaluators, as well as for the use of mentors from outside the school for internal evaluations, is the need for assessment of the quality of schools by criteria applicable beyond each school and consistent across a wide range of schools. Schools need to know where they stand in relation to higher and wider standards than they may themselves have achieved.

Yet schools, like the communities they serve, are very different. Some are old, some new; some are affluent, some have very limited resources; some are large; others are small. They have different purposes and emphases. They legitimately count their successes in different ways.

Such differences must be respected. It is very important also to encourage, and not underrate, the sincere endeavours of schools unlikely to achieve the conventional heights of some of their colleagues.

While no school should proceed under any delusions about the quality of what it is and does, it has to be accepted and sensitively recognised in evaluations that considerable importance has to be given to the individual circumstances, history and tone of every school.

Some seemingly precise scoring in assessing the quality of features in a school must be read in the light of this principle.

Schools, like the communities they serve, are very different. They legitimately count their successes in different ways.