ABSTRACT
Many of the schools in the study had made significant steps to change their in-school processes in order to bring about improvements in pupil achievement. For some, the starting conditions were a somewhat distant memory; for others their recollections of those times were all too close. From the data we collected, a number of challenges were common. Not all the schools had faced all the challenges, but many schools had faced more than one. That finding is not particularly surprising since many of the problems were linked or shared a root reason or explanation. Almost all the difficulties were however significant. It is therefore a tribute to the energy, commitment and professionalism of the teachers, the senior staff and the headteachers that they managed to move forward and overcome those challenges in the way they had.
