ACT public schools will undergo a comprehensive audit every five years to ensure they are performing up to standard and are accountable to students and government.
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ACT Education Minister Shane Rattenbury will announce on Friday a new school improvement framework which will see 20 schools each year come under the microscope.
Schools will have to develop and make public their annual action plans, in which they will "map processes, resources and time required to deliver on the commitment in the school strategic plan".
All schools will use a national data set – the National School Improvement Tool – to measure their performance.
The tool, developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research, has nine benchmarks around school culture, teaching, classroom practice, curriculum development, school resources, individual student care, community partnerships, evaluation and data analysis.
Schools would be evaluated on their progress each year and report results to their school boards.
School boards would then incorporate a summary of achievement in their annual reports which would be made public.
Mr Rattenbury said the Education Directorate had been working on the performance measures for a year in consultation with international education expert Professor Brian Caldwell and the new regime would lead to improved performance and greater consistency between schools.
"This has the potential to provide a better measure than NAPLAN in terms of how a school is performing," Mr Rattenbury said.
"This offers a deeper analysis, going beyond a point-in-time measure of literacy and numeracy and looks at a much deeper and wider range of measures."
"It will ensure we have a consistent approach to education across all our public schools and provide parents with the confidence that their children are receiving the same, high quality education as every other student in Canberra," he said.
Under the new system, all ACT government schools will be scheduled to undergo performance reviews within five years although the directorate would have the discretion to call for a "special purpose review" for individual schools within that five-year cycle on the advice of school network leaders.
This might happen after the appointment of a new principal, if the school was achieving above average successes the directorate wanted to replicate in other schools, or when a school was found to be in need of additional support.
In these cases, specific terms of reference would be used during the reviews.
A large focus of the new framework is in delineating lines of accountability from teachers through to school leaders, network leaders an directorate central office.
Mr Rattenbury said the framework would "strengthen and clarify the roles and responsibilities of principals, school network leaders, and school boards".
The framework had been developed in consultation with a number of professional and local education bodies with the Australian Education Union welcoming its release.
"We embrace accountability and this is a streamlining of processes that will enhance accountability and is nothing to be fearful of. Principals and teachers are at the heart of the process, and things being done with schools rather than being done to them, so we welcome that approach," said ACT secretary Glenn Fowler.
