Introduction

Over the past three decades school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) research and practice have become an influential driver of educational policy and practice across many educational systems (Teddlie and Reynolds, 2000). A plethora of effectiveness studies have identified factors associated with more and less effective systems (Levin and Lockheed, 1993), schools (Sammons et al., 1995; Stoll and Myers, 1998) and classrooms (Creemers, 1994; Muijs and Reynolds, 2001) whilst school improvement research and practice have identified a number of processes associated with improvement in a range of different contexts (Hopkins et al., 1994; Harris et al., 2006; MacBeath et al., 2007). Despite a series of critiques (Slee et al., 1998; Thrupp, 1999; Coe, 2009; Gorard, 2010) SESI has continued to play an important role in shaping educational systems, acting as an important source for educational change whilst retaining close relationships with policy makers and practitioners in the field.