The Schools’ Self-Evaluation Observatory (SSeO) was created in 2015 by Professor José Augusto Pacheco, as part of the Education Research Center (CIEd) at the University of Minho (UM), as a product with a social impact of the research project on External Evaluation of Schools (EES) “Impacts and Effects of External Evaluation of non-higher Education Schools”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/CPE-CED/116674/2010) between 2012 and 2015, with Professor José Augusto Pacheco (CIEd/UMinho) as Principal Investigator (PI) and the collaboration of researchers from 6 Portuguese public universities (Minho, Porto, Coimbra, Lisbon, Évora and Algarve).

The SSeO currently includes researchers who were part of the research project “Mechanisms of schools and inspectorate change. A study on the 3rd cycle of external evaluation of non-higher education schools, in Portugal” (PTDC/CED-EDG/30410/2017), whose PI was Professor José Augusto Pacheco and in which 4 universities participated (Minho, Coimbra, Aberta and Évora).

The SSeO team is made up of 5 PhD researchers from CIEd/UMinho, including one researcher with funding from the Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus Competition (2021.03265.CEECIND) and two researchers from the Open University (UAb). Also collaborating with SSeO are 5 doctoral students supervised by CIEd researchers, whose research projects are related to Schools’ Self-Evaluation (SSE) processes and practices. Recently, a student-researcher from the Bachelor’s Degree in Education has joined, under the application for the UMinho Scientific Research Initiation Award (Order RT-12/2020). Two of the doctoral students who are part of the SSeO have FCT Doctoral Scholarships (2020.04489.BD and UI/BD/154491/2022).

The integration of SSeO into the institutional evaluation network of schools at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio, Brazil) demonstrates its internationalization nature.

SSeO is not-for-profit and is implemented from an action-research perspective, based on a training logic, with the participation of researchers who share an interest in SSE in the context of EES. Its purpose is to make a scientific contribution to improving SSE practices by providing expert advice to 30 schools, creating conditions for integrating self-evaluation into internal evaluation practices, contributing to the organizational, curricular and pedagogical improvement of schools, in a partnership between advice and research for the study of school evaluation, from a research-action-training/knowledge dissemination perspective, following the principles of collaboration, ethics, responsibility and autonomy.