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In order to support research on school effectiveness, there is a need for valid and reliable instruments to assess policymaking capacities of schools. Increasingly, policymaking is seen as a shared responsibility of the entire pedagogical team of a school. In this article, data were analysed from a sample of 1,696 (care) teachers coordinators and principals from 77 Flemish primary schools to assess critical aspects concerning validity and reliability of the Policy Making Capacities Questionnaire (PMC-Q). Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the fit for the model with eight factors is limited. The subscales were found to be strongly correlated and difficult to distinguish, and one of the subscales turned out to be not well captured by the questionnaire. The results indicate sufficient interrater reliability and within-group agreement to aggregate responses to school level. Suggestions are made for further development of the PMC-Q and its use for research and practice.

The discourse of quality has permeated everyday discussions about education, yet the concept as such remains complex. Moreover, during the constant struggle to improve educational quality, governments have increasingly devoted attention to the results of international large-scale assessments. As those results are used to inform policy decisions to improve countries' educational quality, it is important to understand how this concept of quality is appropriated. As a synthesis of how quality is conceptualised and operationalised in this body of research is lacking, the current paper seeks to fill that gap by presenting a systematic review. Our analysis identified definitional patterns and explored the corresponding methods for measuring quality. Based on this analysis of the reviewed studies, a framework of four approaches towards quality emerged to render the concept more accessible. In light of these results, benefits and limitations of the concept's complexity are discussed, and implications for research are forwarded.