International research confirms what most people in the educational sector already know: the quality of education is mainly determined by the quality of teachers. About 70% of the success (or failure) of a school can be predicted by the quality or professionalism of its teachers. Permanent education for teachers improve students’ results significantly. But there are other advantages as well: it empowers individual teachers, it strengthens the individual and collective effectiveness, and it improves the results of the organisation as a whole. In Holland a law was developed in order to establish teacher competences (Wet BIO). It lists seven main competences that all teachers should have in their repertoire. This law, however, is not obligatory and therefore misses the necessary impact.

“CBE has developed a questionnaire that measures the extent to which teachers comply with these competences. The unique feature of this questionnaire is that it gives insight in the actual competences of teachers instead of merely showing whether they master a competence a little, largely or completely. It shows the exact aspects of a competence that a teacher possesses and which aspects still need to be learned or improved. This information is useful with regard to the selection of appropriate schooling. It furthermore shows how competences are spread throughout the school. Not every teacher needs to possess all competences, it’s more important that all competences are present within the school. Once it is known who has fully mastered all competences, a process of internal knowledge management can be started, in which teachers can learn from each other. These outcomes may be used for 180/360 degrees feedback.