ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will describe and explain how one school, in a family of schools, set about trying to improve the achievement of boys, the successes we have had so far and the lessons we have learned that might be useful to other groups of teachers faced with similar challenges. In all this I am aware that the job is only part way through, that there is much more to be learned and that we will no doubt be surprised in the subsequent stages of our journey by the twists and turns of fortune that working with human beings in an inexact science can bring. The art of success in school improvement is to employ the canny, hard-won pragmatism of teachers in the face of the wild-eyed certainty of the advocates of short-term quick fixes. I would therefore recommend that the readers of this chapter should be quite prepared to reject the lessons it purports to commend in favour of the lessons you yourselves have learned in the context of your own situation. It is in this spirit that the insights below are offered.
