Date: December 10, 2007
Release: Immediate

MAKING SCHOOLS MORE SUCCESSFUL FOR MORE STUDENTS MORE OF THE TIME

The key findings of 30 years of worldwide School Effectiveness Research (SER) are examined in a new report funded by CfBT Education Trust. The report, entitled School Effectiveness and Equity: Making Connections considers international research into the characteristics of effective schools and provides a framework for practitioners and policy-makers whose aim is to create more successful schools. The author, Professor Pam Sammons, has for many years been one of the leading figures in the movement to research the workings of schools of different types, including those that ‘over-achieve’. The highly effective schools are ones ‘in which students progress further than might be expected from consideration of its intake’.

The CfBT report reminds us that before this body of research began, people did not realise how powerful the impact could be of more effective schools and there was a tendency to explain student results largely in terms of social class. School Effectiveness Research has shown that the kind of school a child goes to can matter a great deal in terms of educational outcomes and life chances. The report highlights the importance of strong links between understanding school effectiveness and achieving greater equity and social justice through education. This is particularly relevant with regard to promoting wider policies of social inclusion and reducing the achievement gap.

So what specifically do effective schools do? In the CfBT Report Sammons identifies the key aspects of school life that make maximum difference, these include:

  • leadership that focuses on educational quality and getting the right staff
  • consistent approaches to teaching
  • assessment for learning
  • high levels of parental engagement.

These approaches appear to be key to success across international boundaries and regardless of the level of deprivation of the communities served by schools. Pam Sammons also emphasises the importance of the school culture. Schools that achieve against the odds are often characterised by a ‘mindset’ that includes a fundamental optimism and a problem-solving group attitude on the part of the staff. The report goes on to describe how the research has emphasised the need to make sense of effectiveness at the level of the classroom and the individual teacher.

The CfBT report teases out some of the practical implications of the research for school improvement. Effective school improvement programmes tend to:

  • focus closely on changes at the classroom level
  • adopt explicit, shared approaches to teaching strategies
  • collect systematic evaluative evidence
  • aim for cultural as well as structural changes.

Professor Sammons recognises that some aspects of SER are controversial. She explains that this, in part, is linked to disagreement about the purposes and therefore the outcomes of schooling. Professor Sammons argues that there is no necessary tension between ‘academic’ or cognitive progress, and social and emotional development. In her conclusion she advocates schools that both maintain an emphasis on fostering students’ progress, while promoting social and emotional development, recognising that these outcomes can be complementary.

SER may not offer a universal panacea but this research review suggests it can inform, empower and challenge educators to make schools more successful for more students more of the time.

The author, Professor Pam Sammons, will be presenting the findings at launch event in London on 10 December. Anyone interested in attending should contact research@cfbt.com. The report will be available for download from November 30 at www.cfbt/evidenceforeducation.com.

Ends

Notes for Editors:

CfBT Education Trust is a leading education consultancy and service organisation. Our object is to provide education for public benefit both in the UK and internationally. Established 40 years ago CfBT Education Trust now has an annual turnover exceeding £100 million and employs more than 2,000 staff worldwide who support educational reform, teach, advise, research and train.

As a not-for-profit organisation we commit around £1 million of our surpluses every year for practice-based educational research.

Pam Sammons is Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham School of Education and a member of the Teaching and Leadership Research Centre there. She has been involved in school effectiveness and improvement research for over 25 years.

 

For more information contact:

Lindsay Blamires
Marketing Communications Officer
CfBT Education Trust
60 Queens Road
Reading
Berkshire
RG1 4BS
Tel: 0118 902 1841
lblamires@cfbt.com