The question of what makes schools effective is the subject of much international debate. This book brings together for the first time research that has been done in the hitherto separate fields of school effectiveness and school improvement. An international team of contributors look at the conceptual, conditional and practical characteristics of effectiveness, and offer guidelines on ways and means of working towards creating better schools. The contributors emphasise the need for collaborative working, and provide a range of discussion points and further reading lists to help school managers and their teams.

The disciplines of school effectiveness research and school improvement practice and research have been apart for too long. This book is the first major attempt, by leading writers and practitioners in these fields, to bring the areas together in a coherent way.
Existing knowledge about the characteristics of good' schools is outlined, together with the knowledge base about how to make schools good schools'.
The book also makes an entirely original contribution to re-thinking practice in school improvement that can revolutionise our thinking in the late 1990s, and which can be of use to academics, to policymakers and to the practitioners which much existing work has neglected.