Abstract
For much of the eighties progress in the UK towards the establishment of comprehensive frameworks for judging schools’ performance has been patchy. In the late eighties, however, a variety of proposals have been made for remedying these deficiencies and the creation of systematic frameworks for performance evaluation look a realistic possibility for the coming decade. In this paper we explore some of the lessons to be learnt from previous efforts and the steps that will need to be taken if the education service is to avoid merely replicating the patchiness of the eighties on a grander scale.