The question of how to improve the quality of teaching and learning lies in the heart of the contemporary educational debate. Accountability and inspection are part of the 'rhetoric' employed to define the problem of teaching quality. The particular research address issues of inspection and improvement within the Cypriot Educational System. School improvement is not defined in any official document in the current inspection system in Cyprus. It is rather stated within the purpose of inspection in official documents. An awareness of how people actually experience inspection as a source of change and improvement is vital to the basic understanding of whether there has actually been improvement. Such aims and questions necessitated the use of a 'case study' as a research design. A national standards system is not available, by which to make comparisons and correlations, to make inferences whether improvement has been achieved as
a result of inspection. Inspection reports and grades (numerical data) are identified on the basis of subjective comments by the inspectors for a particular teachers' performance and any attempt to make any documentary analysis on these was not possible since access is not allowed by the educational authorities. Subsequently, in order to address this problem, I had to obtain the responses and therefore the perceptions of stakeholders as to whether and how improvement is achieved in the current inspection system in Cyprus and to study whether the conditions under which improvement through inspection exist or does not exist within the
particular inspection system.