Making schools more successful for more students more of the time

In the CfBT Report Professor Sammons identifies the key aspects of school life that make maximum difference, these include: leadership that focuses on educational quality and getting the right staff: consistent approaches to teaching: assessment for learning: and high levels of parental engagement.

These approaches appear to be key to success across international boundaries and regardless of the level of deprivation of the communities served by schools.  Pam Sammons also emphasises the importance of the school culture. Schools that achieve against the odds are often characterised by a 'mindset' that includes a fundamental optimism and a problem-solving group attitude on the part of the staff. The report goes on to describe how the research has emphasized the need to make sense of effectiveness at the level of the classroom and the individual teacher.

The CfBT report teases out some of the practical implications of the research for school improvement. Effective school improvement programmes tend to:

• focus closely on changes at the classroom level
• adopt explicit, shared approaches to teaching strategies
• collect systematic evaluative evidence
• aim for cultural as well as structural changes.

Professor Sammons recognises that some aspects of SER are controversial. She explains that this, in part, is linked to disagreement about the purposes and therefore the outcomes of schooling. Professor Sammons argues that there is no necessary tension between 'academic' or cognitive progress, and social and emotional development. In her conclusion she advocates schools that both maintain an emphasis on fostering students' progress, while promoting social and emotional development, recognising that these outcomes can be complementary.

SER may not offer a universal panacea but this research review suggests it can inform, empower and challenge educators to make schools more successful for more students more of the time.

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Notes to editors:

The University of Nottingham undertakes world-changing research, provides innovative teaching and a student experience of the highest quality. Ranked by Newsweek in the world's Top 75 universities, its academics have won two Nobel Prizes since 2003. The University is an international institution with campuses in the United Kingdom, Malaysia and China.

CfBT Education Trust is a leading education consultancy and service organisation which provides education for public benefit both in the UK and internationally. Established 40 years ago CfBT Education Trust now has an annual turnover exceeding £100 million and employs more than 2,000 staff worldwide who support educational reform, teach, advise, research and train. More information can be found at http://www.cfbt.com/

More information is available from Professor Pam Sammons on +44 (0)115 8467200, pam.sammons@nottingham.ac.uk; or Lindsay Blarmires at the CfBT Education Trust on +44 (0) 118 9021841, lblamires@cfbt.com; or Media Relations Manager Lindsay Brooke in the University's Communications Office on +44 (0)115 9515793, lindsay.brooke@nottingham.ac.uk.