Failure-Free Education? The Past, Present and Future of School Effectiveness and School Improvement

This collection of David Reynolds' writing brings together for the first time many of his most influential and thought-provoking pieces. Drawing on the author's work from over three decades the individual article, paper and book extracts combine to give a valuable overview of how school effectiveness is both perceived and changing.
The individual papers have been updated to reflect recent changes, while fresh material firmly sets the collection within a modern context. Grouped into four coherent sections, the book covers all aspects of school effectiveness, looking at:

• laying the foundations of the effective school
• pushing the boundaries
• trying to influence policy and practice
• contemporary cutting-edge solutions.

David Reynolds is recognised internationally as one of the leaders of the school effectiveness and school improvement movement, and Failure Free Education? brings together for the first time many of his most influential and provocative pieces. Drawing on the author’s work from over three decades, these extracts from his seminal books, chapters, papers and articles combine to give a unique overview of how the movement developed, the problems involved in the application of the knowledge and the disciplines’ potentially glittering future now. The book also covers the issues raised by, and lessons learned from, his close involvement with English government educational policymaking from the mid 1990s to date. This book is essential reading for those who seek to understand how we can make every school a good school, and what the obstacles may be to achieving that goal.

@contents: Selected Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: School Effectiveness and School Improvement in Retrospect, 1971-2010; and Prospect, 2010 Onwards 2. The Delinquent School 3. The Study and Remediation of Ineffective Schools: Some Further Reflections 4.The Truth, The Whole-Class Truth 5.World Class Schools 6. Teacher Effectiveness: Better Teachers, Better Schools 7.School Effectiveness and Teacher Effectiveness in Mathematics: Some Preliminary Findings from the Evaluation of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme Primary 8.The High Reliability Schools Project – Some Preliminary Results and Analyses 9.The Remit and Methods of the Numeracy Task Force 10. School Improvement for Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances 11.What Leaders Need to Know About Teacher Effectiveness 12.Schools Learning From Their Best – The Within School Variation Project 13. The Future Agenda For School Effectiveness Research 14. How Can Recent Research In School Effectiveness and School Improvement Inform Our Thinking About Educational Policies? 15. What Do We Want Our Educational System To Look Like: What Do We Need To Do To Make It Happen? References

David Reynolds is Professor of Education at the University of Plymouth, UK.