Decentralization tendencies and teacher evaluation policies in European countries

Recent years have seen intensified awareness about teachers’ role in promoting student learning, and consequently, an increased emphasis on evaluating teachers and their work. Among many school factors, the teaching quality is a key-parameter of student learning. For these reasons, in many national contexts teacher performance evaluation is one of the elements that draw significant attention, in terms of both international surveys and concrete measures. Starting from the state of the art in several European school systems, our goal is to describe, compare and analyse models adopted to assess teaching quality. We attempt to highlight any differences in perspectives and models agreed by the European systems and to reflect on risks and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses associated with the use of such instruments in the teacher evaluation. The teachers are only one of many factors that influence student achievements, but the evaluation of teachers is necessary because there is an increased awareness of how crucial the teachers are in the achievement of students and in the progress of society.