Any teacher or pupil who has been in school in the days and weeks leading up to an inspection will know what it feels like. Often, there is a frantic effort to ensure that, when the inspectors arrive, the school is looking as good as possible, physically and educationally. Everyone has to be on their best behaviour.

How realistic an impression this gives inspectors of a school is another matter. If the authorities are doing their best to ensure that a school is showing its best face on the day of the inspection, there is a good chance problems that need tackling will be hidden behind the blackboard and the inspectors will leave none the wiser.

Partly to tackle this problem, the idea of surprise inspections has been under consideration for some time and now it has taken a step closer. Surprise may not be precisely the right word for the pilot schemes – schools will receive two days warning instead of two or three weeks – but nonetheless it does represent a significant change.

And it is not the only one – the inspection body Education Scotland will also pilot so-called neighbourhood reviews which, rather than looking at a school in isolation, will look at a secondary and its surrounding primaries and nurseries as well as colleges. The idea is that the inspectors will gain an overview of what a pupil will experience as they go through the different levels of education in a particular community.

Both innovations are welcome and worth exploring further. On the issue of the new inspections, it is hard to see how they could not be an improvement on the current situation. At the moment, primaries are given two weeks’ notice of an inspection and secondaries three weeks but with just two days to prepare in the pilots, inspectors are much more likely to see the school as it really is. Naturally, the inspectors will have to consider factors such as short-term staff shortages and how they might have affected the school on the day, but equally, the inspection team is more likely to see schools not in the ideal state after weeks of preparation but how they are run throughout the year.

The new inspections are also likely to be an improvement in one other respect. At present, the announcement of an inspection can mean two or three weeks of pressure on staff (and by extention pupils) as they try to prepare for the visit of the inspectors. Under any new regime of two days’ notice, there will still be some stress of course, but it will all be over much more quickly and to that extent will make the experience a little easier for teachers.

The second idea being piloted, that of a neighbourhood review, is also welcome. Under the current regime, inspectors report only on a school and how it is performing, but all schools exist as part of a wider network of other educational establishments so it is natural for inspectors to look at the whole picture. The chances are that, by doing so, a better impression will emerge of how individual communities are faring in educating their children and how it can be improved.

One small word of caution is in order though. The principles at work in the new pilot schemes are sound, but in looking at the whole community as part of a neighbourhood review, it is important that inspectors keep the central focus on individual schools and how they are performing. A move to broaden reviews and to provide little or no notice for schools is a change for the better, but parents still expect and deserve to know how their children’s school is doing.