The disciplines of school effectiveness research and school improvement practice and research have been apart for too long. This book is the first major attempt, by leading writers and practitioners in these fields, to bring the areas together in a coherent way. Existing knowledge about the characteristics of `good' schools is outlined, together with the knowledge base about how to `make schools good schools'. The book also makes an entirely original contribution to re-thinking practice in school improvement that can revolutionise our thinking in the late 1990s, and which can be of use to academics, to policymakers and to the practitioners which much existing work has neglected.

In 2002 David Hopkins was appointed Head of the Government's Standards and Effectiveness Unit at the DfES, taking over from Michael Barber. In the same year, David Reynolds was awarded a CBE for his work for the Numeracy Task Force.

Chapter 1 School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Robert Bollen; Chapter 2 The Goals of School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Bert Creemers; Chapter 3 The School Effectiveness Knowledge Base, Bert Creemers; Chapter 4 The School Improvement Knowledge Base, David Hopkins, Nijs Lagerweij; Chapter 5 Merging School Effectiveness and School Improvement, David Reynolds, Louise Stoll; Chapter 6 Merging School Effectiveness and School Improvement Practical Examples, Louise Stoll, David Reynolds, Bert Creemers, David Hopkins;