About Our Schools: Improving on previous best

Written by Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters, About Our Schools: Improving on previous best examines in detail the turbulent years of education policy and practice from the late 1970s to the present day – and sets out what policy-makers and education leaders can do to enable our schools to improve on their previous best.

Foreword by Danny Dorling.

Through revealing and forthright interviews with 14 secretaries of state – from Kenneth Baker to Michael Gove and Gavin Williamson, together with many other leading figures in education – Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters provide fascinating insights into the various evolutions and revolutions that have taken place in English state education since 1976.

In so doing they highlight key areas for improvement and assess where we should go from here to enable teachers and schools to improve the learning and broaden the horizons of each and every one of their pupils – whatever their talents, challenges, advantages or problems.

Split into four parts, the book shares a range of perspectives and informed viewpoints on education, covering areas such as curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; school improvement and leadership; admissions, attendance, exclusions and behaviour; special educational needs and disabilities; and governance and finance of schooling.

The authors offer insights into how education policies are made, what helps and what gets in the way – and explore how institutional barriers and obstacles to pupil fulfilment can be overcome. And, crucially, the authors conclude by outlining 39 steps to success that can help the education sector build forward together and foster more collaborative partnerships towards a brighter future.

Tim and Mick have both spent a lifetime in state-provided education – first as pupils, then as teachers, and finally in various leadership and policy-making positions, both in and out of schools. About Our Schools is born out of their shared love for education and their appreciation of how schooling can be a transformative element in the lives of children and young people.

Suitable for teachers, head teachers, school governors and policy-makers, as well as parents and anyone interested in the politics of schooling.

Contents include:

Part One: Political influence – storms, showers and sunny periods … and the realities of a changing climate in schooling

• Chapter 1. School climate changes over the years: the state’s involvement in schooling and how 1976 was a turning point from one educational age to another – a brief synopsis
• Chapter 2. Do politicians make a difference? Do they help or hinder? Who creates the climate in which teachers work?
• Chapter 3. How policies are made: what helps and what gets in the way
• Chapter 4. Political involvement in the way our schooling is organised: the decline of local authorities and the rise of MATs – it all ends in tiers

Part Two: The confused and disputed arenas – the occluded fronts

• Chapter 5. Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment: the three-sided wheel driving learning in schools on an unnecessarily bumpy ride
• Chapter 6. Securing a sufficient supply of suitably qualified teachers and then keeping them going
• Chapter 7. School improvement and leadership – creating a climate where the weather can improve

Part Three: Overcoming barriers to success: institutional barriers and obstacles to pupil fulfilment – the doldrums

• Chapter 8. Admissions, attendance, exclusions and behaviour – a cocktail of unfairness
• Chapter 9. Special educational needs and disabilities – unfulfilled good intentions
• Chapter 10. Circumstances, disadvantage, parents, community, early years and adolesc

Twice a chief education officer for ten years each in Oxfordshire and Birmingham and leader of the London Challenge, Tim Brighouse says he has learned from most of his many mistakes as a teacher, teacher educator and administrator. He believes in the power of teachers and schools to change the world for the better.

A former head teacher, Mick Waters has worked in teacher education and at policy levels in both local and national government. Over time he has been asked to work in the UK and abroad either with national governments or directly with schools to develop revised policy and practice for leadership, teacher education, governance and classroom teaching.