Whether the school a child attends is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is only one of the many factors influencing his or her success. In the second of his new series for School Leadership Today, John West-Burnham asks why schools seeking to improve student outcomes rarely consider the rest.
School improvement has been the prevailing orthodoxy in school policy and leadership for a generation. There is no doubt that as the dominant mode of strategic thinking informing policy across school systems, the approach has achieved significant change and has been responsible for improvements in the performance and effectiveness of schools.
Parallel with this focus on improving the school as an institution has been recognition that perhaps just focusing on the school might not be enough. Jerrim demonstrates the very real impact of family and social advantage:
‘High achieving boys from the most advantaged family backgrounds in England are roughly two and a half years ahead of their counterparts in the least advantaged households by the age of 15.’
Schools have improved as schools – there are now more good schools than at any time in the past – but that assumes that successful schools are the most significant manifestation of a high performing education system. One of the key challenges facing education systems such as England and many parts of the USA is that while there is undisputed excellence, there is a lack of equity. In other words, while every child has the right to go to school, not every child goes to a good school.