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School Management and School Improvement. What is the most effective way of improving your school without additional funding or additional resources? Click here for links to School Improvement Reports This is one of the fundamental questions of schooling in the 21st century. All of us need to ensure that our schools are improving constantly, and none of us can be sure of how much more money will be available for each imitative. Constant improvement without constant new income is a challenge that faces us all. The concept of “school improvement” developed in the 1990s. It is made up of two simple notions: a) That change is continual b) That the school’s response to change should develop from within the school rather than be imposed from without. It is an approach which forces a complete re-think of the way in which school managers work with teachers, parents, pupils and government. The result is an approach which has generated much comment, and many books and reports. Many have written about school improvement – but one writer has been noted not only for addressing the issue of how the school should cope with change – but also by taking into account the fact that much of the time no extra money will be available to help the school cope with the change. Thus the classic two part analysis of school improvement above, became a three part approach. School improvement according to this analysis, recognises that: a) That change is continual b) That the school’s response to change should develop from within the school rather than be imposed from without. c) There is no extra money available. The three part approach to school improvement was developed by Tony Attwood who since the 1990s has been responsible for a series of books, under the general head “School Improvement Reports” each of which find solutions to this three issue problem. Tony Attwood’s approach lays down a simple mechanism for school improvement – a mechanism which reversed the approach which was prevalent in the 1990s. In summary, what Tony Attwood did was to take research that showed that even in the most unsuccessful school there would be one or two successful and improving departments or teachers. From this starting point he put forward two proposals:
In other words, no matter what the state of the school, one should start with the successful parts of the school, and export that success, rather than focussing on a failing area of the school and trying to turn that around. Ten years on from his first formulation of his radical approach we asked Tony to set out in very brief summary, how his approach works. A copy of that summary is available by clicking here. The reports are now available in three formats. They can be purchased as photocopiable books which come in ring binders, on CD Roms and finally, as downloadable articles which can be retrieved directly from our web sites. A list of titles is shown below. If you click on any of the titles you will be taken to a page which gives a detailed description of the contents of that particular report. You can then buy the book as a CD or copiable text from that page, or return to the list below to buy the report as a download directly into your computer, at a significant saving.
Please note that all download prices are subject to VAT. |
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