Improving schools from the inside out

'Towards Self-Improving School Systems: Lessons from a City Challenge' - a new book from professor of education, Mel Ainscow CBE, draws on over ten years of research including the Greater Manchester Challenge. Inequality and fragmentation in England's schools system requires a new model to tackle the problem from the inside, according to a new book by Professor Mel Ainscow CBE, of The University of Manchester. 'Towards Self-Improving School Systems: Lessons from a City Challenge' documents how research carried out by a team of academics in the Manchester Institute of Education, at The University of Manchester, was used to shape a highly acclaimed city-wide improvement initiative involving over 1,100 schools. Drawing on over ten years of research carried out with his colleagues at the Manchester Institute, Prof Aisncow, chief advisor to the Greater Manchester Challenge, presents a new way of thinking about system change in the book, published by Routledge this week. His model builds on the idea that there are untapped resources within schools and the communities they serve that can be mobilised in order to transform schools from places that do well for some children to ones that do well for many more. It places a greater requirement on improvement from within, requiring teachers, particularly those in leadership posts, to see themselves as having wider responsibility for all children and young people, not just those that attend their own schools. The model has major implications for key stakeholders within the education system and requires flexibility to develop patterns of working that enable them to cooperate with other schools to a greater degree.