Educational evaluation and accountability in east timor’s higher public education: the current framework

The educational accountability includes improving both educational quality and educational equity. Accountability is a political and legal concept that denotes the responsibility of an organization or individual (an agent) to perform within the specified boundaries set by some higher political authority and to report to and to justify one’s actions to this authority. Accountability is a basic tenet of democratic political systems (Mathison, 2009; Ryan and Feller, 2009). East Timor has done efforts to introduce accountability practices in education system, in particular in higher educational system due to the necessary improvement of teaching’ quality and to address the challenges of the public higher education system and the criteria of the new public management model addressed. In this context, higher education institutions are called upon to provide a wider public service and simultaneously more efficient, with better results. The quality of education system is crucial to the development of national human resources (Education Bases Law, 2008). The present article, of theoretical and critical nature, intends to make a review and to analyze the current framework regarding the evaluation of teacher’s performance and a more accountability in East Timor’s Higher Public Education. We identify the elements of the accountability system and its present practice in the public educational system in order to obtain higher quality of teaching and the educational practice of teacher.