Giorgio Allulli

After a short description of the history of school system evaluation, the author examines the main questions related to the implementation of the educational policies evaluation: a) the change of attitude needed inside the public administration as a consequence of the use of evaluation; b) the relationship between evaluators and policy makers; c) the goals of school system evaluation; d) the targets of evaluation; e) the relationship between external ed internal evaluation: f) the use of indicators. Finally it is presented the model followed by the school system evaluation Committee, which operates in the Trento region since 1992. The Committee has introduced gradually the idea of evaluation, beginning with the evaluation of the general system, then introducing schools self evaluation (which is now operated by almost all the Trento schools) to arrive finally to put forward the idea of school external evaluation.