BESP: benchmarking of Portuguese secondary schools

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the implementation of a web‐based platform integrating benchmarking and data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the Portuguese secondary schools. Design/methodology/approach: The benchmarking platform is designed around a set of key performance indicators that are displayed using benchmarking graphs. These indicators are also aggregated through the methodology of DEA to provide a summary measure of performance. Findings: The benchmarking platform developed enables schools to perform internal and external evaluation through a standard model that is based on indicators of school activities. It encourages schools' efforts of continuous improvement and increases society awareness regarding schools' context and results obtained. Practical implications: The benchmarking platform can be useful for schools and general public. For the general public, there is a tool that allows the construction of user‐defined rankings online and benchmarking tools that allow the comparison of performance of a specific school with others. In addition to these features, schools have in the BESP platform a repository of historical data, and the possibility to see a set of graphs that show for some indicators their evolution over time. Originality/value: This paper describes a breakthrough in the Portuguese education context. The BESP platform is the first in this context to combine DEA and benchmarking tools in a web‐based environment, designed to enable real‐time performance assessments.