SCHOOL inspectors may be called upon to track effectiveness of education across entire communities under radical new proposals.

The officials currently produce reports separately on individual schools, nurseries, councils, colleges and educational psychologists - while also assessing how well subjects are taught across the country.

But their bosses at Education Scotland are considering whether to use them to inspect all these educational establishments in one area at the same time.

The proposed move would allow more comprehensive reports to be produced which show how well young people are served by the education system where they live.

The inspectorate is also considering whether to spend time addressing issues of wider concern such as the drop-off in attainment when pupils move between primary and secondary school.

The ideas have come forward as part of a wide-ranging consultation on the future role of the school inspectorate, launched by Education Scotland.

Education Scotland's chief operating officer, Alastair Delaney, stressed the inspection of schools would still play a crucial role in its work, adding that .the time was right for a wide-ranging review to establish how education in Scotland could be improved by the work of the body.

He said: "Nothing has been decided yet and we are interested in getting as many views as possible on the future, but we are considering a number of ideas.

"We currently inspect different establishments at different times and it may be a number of years before all the nurseries and schools are inspected in a particular area.

"Should we inspect in a way which encourages nurseries, primaries and secondaries to work better together and make the learning experience seamless?"

The consultation was welcomed by Ken Cunningham, general secretary of School Leaders' Scotland, which represents secondary headteachers.

He said: "It is exciting to be able to stand back and look at a system and ask how can we do it better. Inspecting a community could really work, but the problem would be managing national expectation of it with the resources available. We should also be mature enough to ask questions about whether we need regular inspections of schools in the way we do it now because there is already so much scrutiny."

Eileen Prior, executive director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said one of the key drivers for change should be engagement with families.

She said: "Lots of parents look to Education Scotland for information about their school and inspection reports are an important source of information. But if we were better at engaging parents then they wouldn't need an inspection body to tell them how good schools were because they would already know."

School inspections were overhauled in 2010 to reduce stress on teaching staff and increase the involvement of parents.

Under the reforms, the number of inspections were reduced with those schools seen as under-performing made more of a priority.

In addition, inspectors began to focus more on the aspects of a school's performance that were most important in driving up standards, rather than looking at everything they did.

The changes dated from the publication of the Crerar Review in 2007, which looked at scrutiny of public services across Scotland.

The review found most public services backed external scrutiny, but felt it was in danger of becoming a burden and was distracting resources from frontline delivery.