ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago this summer I read a book that changed the course of my professional life. Prior to 1979, the ability of schools to make a difference to student learning was widely doubted. Michael Rutter (1979) and his colleagues, however, with the publication of 15000 Hours, demonstrated unequivocally that schools with similar intakes had widely contrasting effects on student performance. More importantly, the factors that accounted for that difference were largely internal and open to modification by the school staff themselves. So at last research evidence was emerging on the differential effectiveness of schools that gave an impetus and direction to those, who like myself, were beginning to work in the field of school improvement. Since then, the educational scene has changed dramatically both in terms of policy and practice, we have learned a great deal more about pedagogy and school transformation, and the emphasis on globalisation, collaboration and systemic reform has increased exponentially (Hopkins, 2007b). So, thirty years later it is pleasing to be invited to contribute to this book in order to reflect on ‘what we have learned from school improvement about taking educational reform to scale’ – the title of this article.
