The school evaluation framework

Four domains, eleven standards, and indicators under each. These are reference pages: standards and indicators appear in the document's own words, and the explanations are worded by this platform with the source named.

Choose the document your school is evaluated against

General education schools

Second edition, 2026: four domains and eleven standards.

52 indicators

Kindergarten and early childhood

A separate document with its own terms — children rather than learners, and standard 1-5 is the rights and protection of the child.

50 indicators

School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards

The standards are a quantitative and qualitative description of what is expected of a school, and the measure referred to when evaluating the quality of its performance, classifying it and accrediting it. They were set within the national programme for general-education schools of all three types — public, private and international — and in all three stages: primary, intermediate and secondary. They cover every aspect of school work that bears on teaching and learning, and through them stakeholders obtain reliable data on a school's performance. They are set out below:

4 main domains, branching into 11 standards, under which sit 49 indicators for public schools and 52 for private and international schools.

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 10. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

School management

This domain concerns the effective influence of school management on the school community, carrying performance to advanced levels of excellence. It covers supporting the delivery of plans, managing teaching and learning, the continuous professional development of the school's staff, improving learning outcomes, strengthening the partnership with families and the local community, and upholding learners' rights and protecting them.

1-1 Planning
1-2 Leading the educational process
1-3 The school community
1-4 Institutional development
1-5 Learner rights and protection

Teaching and learning

This domain rests on a learner-centred learning environment, where teaching and learning strategies and activities vary with learners' needs, and where their ability to acquire, apply, analyse and evaluate knowledge and skills is developed. Their learning is assessed with varied, effective methods and instruments, to support it and improve their performance.

2-1 Building learning experiences
2-2 Assessment of learning

Learning outcomes

This domain deals with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values learners are expected to attain after going through planned educational experiences, and it is linked to academic attainment and to personal, health and social development.

3-1 Educational attainment
3-2 Personal, health and social development

School environment

This domain requires the school environment to meet the basic requirements and to assure the quality of its safety and security, so that every group in the school community can reach its educational goals, and learners can reach the intended level in the targeted learning outcomes.

4-1 The school building
4-2 Safety and security

The National Programme for School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation

A national programme run by the Education and Training Evaluation Commission together with the Ministry of Education, to assure and govern the quality of school performance. It rests on gathering comprehensive, reliable data about schools, analysing it, and reporting on the level of performance and the outcomes of general education. It is tied to the targets of Saudi Vision 2030 and the Human Capability Development Program in preparing citizens able to compete globally.

The programme gives a school comprehensive data on the quality of its performance, on which development and continuous improvement are built. It has five objectives:

To establish the actual state of school performance across the Kingdom.
To spread a culture of evaluation and continuous improvement grounded in data and evidence.
To give stakeholders an active part in evaluation and improvement.
To base educational decisions, in their making and their taking, on comprehensive evidence and data.
To strengthen transparency and encourage healthy competition between schools, so that excellence is reached and sustained.

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 6. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

First: School evaluation

A continuous process in which data on a school's performance is gathered through a range of methods and instruments, then analysed to judge the level of quality against standards and criteria set in advance, and from which proposals for improvement and development are drawn. It has two parts: self-evaluation and external evaluation.

Self-evaluation: Processes and procedures the school carries out itself to monitor its performance and verify its effectiveness and efficiency, using the standards and instruments the Commission has approved, so that it can develop and improve that performance.
External evaluation: Processes and procedures carried out by an external evaluation team authorised by the Commission, which evaluates the school's level of performance and measures the quality of its outcomes with the same approved standards and instruments. It yields objective, reliable data on school performance at the national level, on which improvement and development decisions are built.

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 7. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

Second: School classification

A systematic ranking of school performance built on the results of external evaluation, which places the school in one of (4) distinct levels. Its purpose is twofold: to spur healthy competition between schools towards excellence, and to put the data in stakeholders' hands so that decisions — and the enabling, corrective or motivating measures that follow them — rest on it. The four levels are:

Excellence

90% and above

Outstanding performance

Calls for sustaining the excellence and innovating on it

Progress

75% to under 90%

Good performance

Calls for continued follow-up to improve and develop

Launch

50% to under 75%

Acceptable performance

Calls for substantial improvement in some domains

Preparation

Under 50%

Low performance

Calls for fundamental interventions to improve and develop across most evaluation domains

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 8. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

Third: School accreditation

Formal recognition granted to a school by the Commission, or by a body it licenses, resting on how far the school meets the conditions of school performance under the approved standards. It is open to private and international schools: once the school classification results are out, a school that meets the conditions may apply for national school accreditation. It has three statuses:

Fully accredited: Granted to a school that reaches Progress or above in every evaluation domain, without exception.
Not accredited: A school is not accredited in two cases: first, if it is at Preparation in the learning outcomes domain, whatever its levels in the other domains; second, if it is at Preparation in two of the three remaining domains — school management, teaching and learning, and school environment — whatever its level in learning outcomes.
Conditionally accredited: Granted to every school that neither meets the conditions of full accreditation nor falls under either case of non-accreditation.

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 9. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

Evaluation instruments

Evaluation data under these standards is gathered with twelve (12) instruments, grouped into six families:

Analysis of school documents

Observations

Classroom observation
Learning-environment observation

Interviews

Learner interview
Teacher interview
Student counsellor interview
School administration interview

Surveys

Learner survey
Teacher survey
Family survey

National tests

An instrument the Commission administers, not the school; it draws on it alongside the self-evaluation instruments.

Nafs for the primary and intermediate stages, and the Achievement and General Aptitude tests for the secondary stage.

Teachers' professional licences

An instrument the Commission administers, not the school; it draws on it alongside the self-evaluation instruments.

Source: School Evaluation, Classification and Accreditation Standards for General-Education Schools — second edition, 2026, Education and Training Evaluation Commission, p. 15. The wording is this platform's; the information is the source's.

Source: the two school evaluation, classification and accreditation standards documents published by the Education and Training Evaluation Commission. Standard names, indicator texts and their codes are reproduced in the documents' own words because they are statutory text; everything else is worded by this platform, and the information is the source's. The platform grants no accreditation and issues no judgement.