A Good School for Every Child: How to improve our schools

by Taylor; Cyril

• ISBN13: 9780415482530
• ISBN10: 0415482534
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2009-04-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book offers an insider's look at some of the key challenges in education, and is an invaluable guide for parents and teachers interested in how our schools work today.

Author Biography

Sir Cyril Taylor, has served as an adviser to ten successive UK Education Secretaries-and Four Prime Ministers, both Conservative and Labour, from Margaret Thatcher to Gordon Brown, on first the City Technology colleges, then the Specialist Schools, and subsequently on the Specialist Schools and Academies programme from 1987 to 2007.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. ix
About the author-a short biography	p. xi
Disclaimer	p. xiii
Foreword	p. xiv
Introduction	p. xvi
Acknowledgements	p. xvii
List of abbreviations	p. xviii
What makes a good school?	p. 1
How to choose a good school for your child	p. 12
Why we need to empower our head teachers	p. 19
Why we must improve standards of literacy	p. 27
How to ensure that all English 16 and 17 year-olds remain in full-time education or training	p. 36
How to improve low-attaining schools	p. 45
Are academies a good thing?	p. 60
Halting the demise of the United Kingdom's science and engineering base	p. 69
How information communications technology (ICT) can be used to improve learning	p. 78
How specialist schools have helped to raise standards in English secondary schools	p. 84
Why our schools should become centers of community life	p. 104
How can we better integrate our ethnic minorities into their communities?	p. 109
Are schools with a religious character a good thing?	p. 116
Who will champion our vulnerable children?	p. 127
Why and how our gifted and talented children should be nurtured	p. 138
What lessons can we learn from other countries which have high standards in their schools?	p. 150
Could British educational reforms be introduced into the United States?	p. 156
Example of a parent/school agreement	p. 162
The admission of students to the Harris City Academy, Crystal Palace	p. 164
How to calculate the value-added of a secondary school, by Professor David Jesson, York University	p. 171]
Analysis of a sample group of English schools on the list of 638, who in 2007 did not achieve 5+ A*-C at GCSE including maths and English using the David Jesson Value Added and improvement approach	p. 176
Standard curriculum used by the Summer Institute for the Gifted in the United States	p. 178
PISA rating of OECD countries by performance in maths, science and reading	p. 184
Bibliography	p. 190
Index	p. 192
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