The Rapid Improvement of Government Schools in England

This study investigates the experience of an unusually interesting group of schools. There are about 20,000 government-funded primary and secondary schools in England. They are all subject to inspection by the national schools inspectorate for England known as Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills). According to Ofsted a very small proportion of the government schools have recently improved dramatically from a previous low baseline. Ofsted uses a 4 point scale to categorise school quality. Using Ofsted data the authors calculated that there were 360 schools that, in the previous two years or less, had moved from being graded by Ofsted as 'inadequate' (category 4) to being graded as 'good' or 'outstanding' (category 2 or 1, respectively). They wanted to know more about what had happened in these schools. The aim of this study was to engage with the headteachers of these schools in order to better understand their view of the causes of transformation in the educational performance of their schools and to ascertain how they think improvements had taken place. The findings are presented in this report.