In 2012 Slovenian Institute for Adult Education (SIAE) introduced a pilot implementation of institutional expert external evaluation in two educational organizations for adult education. This year expert external evaluation will be carried out in another three educational organizations for adult education.

Expert external evaluation complement the processes of internal quality assessment (self-evaluation) in educational organizations. Educational organizations that participate in the project get external feedback on the quality of their work in specific areas, including recommendations for further development.

The project represents an enhancement of the awards presented for developing quality in adult education. In 2011, based on the evaluation of the existing concept of presenting awards for quality, a new concept for implementation of expert external evaluations was designed. Now this incentive for educational organisations to invest in quality will no longer include just rewarding of investment in quality, but also an assessment of quality in those areas that will be the subject of every public call for participation. In drawing up the new concept, we took account of the social conditions currently prevailing. On the one hand these conditions demand rationalisations in the field of adult education, while on the other hand they demand greater responsibility for ensuring quality in adult education provision in practice and in the results and effects of such education.

In March 2013 we published a public call for participation in expert external evaluation for educational organizations. Organizations participate voluntary. We selected three educational organizations that will participate in expert external evaluations in year 2013: Srednja zdravstvena šola Celje, Srednja šola za farmacijo, kozmetiko in zdravstvo Ljubljana, Razvojni izobraževalni center Novo mesto.

Six experts in the field of adult education, who will act as expert external evaluators (Nada Klučar, Inga Krusič Lamut, Jasna Kržin Stepišnik, Tatjana Novak, Ida Srebotnik, Mirjana Šibanc), will carried out evaluations.

In May and September we carried out trainings for organizations and evaluators, in October and November expert external evaluations will take place. In December organizations and evaluators will meet in SIAE to evaluate the whole process of expert external evaluations in 2013.