“leadership is a key, vision is a driver, relationships are the glue that binds teams of
people together and learning enables them to work innovatively and interdependently.”
Steve Marshall

I have been reading the ''International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement'. The last chapter on 'School Effectiveness and Improvement in the Twenty-first Century: Reframing for the Future' captures the challenges we face and the choices we need to make to ensure that every young person becomes a passionate and committed learner.It identifies the following characteristics in order of their importance to student learning:
(1) Classroom management
(2) Metacognitive processes
(3) Cognitive processes
(4) Home environment/parental support
(5) Student/teacher interactions
(6) Social/behavioural attributes
(7) Motivational/affective attributes
(8) Peer group
(9) Quantity of instruction
(10) School culture
(11) Classroom climate
(12) Classroom instruction
(13) Curriculum design
(14) Academic interactions
(15) Classroom assessment
(16) Community influences
(17) Psychomotor skills
(18) Teacher/administrator decision making
(19) Parent involvement policy
(20) Classroom implementation and support
(21) Student demographics
(22) Out of class time
(23) Program demographics
(24) School demographics
(25) Authority policies
(26) School policies
(27) Authority demographics

If we look at the top five elements that contribute to student learning, it becomes
obvious that it is what happens in the classroom and the home that is critical to an individual
student reaching their potential. What happens at the school, authority or national
level has minimal impact.
Chris