How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better

How does a school system with poor performance become good? And how does one with good performance become excellent? A new report from McKinsey&Co, "How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better", identifies the reform elements that are replicable for school systems elsewhere as they move from poor to fair to good to great to excellent performance.

The report’s findings include the following eight highlights/conclusions:
1. A system can make significant gains from wherever it starts – and these gains can be achieved in six years or less.
2.There is too little focus on ‘process’ in the debate today.
Three types of intervention – structure, resources, and process – are important along the improvement journey. The public debate often centers on structure and resource due to their stakeholder implications. However, the report finds that the vast majority of interventions made by the improving systems in their sample are ‘process’ in nature.
3 Each particular stage of the school system improvement journey is associated with a unique set of interventions.
The research suggests all improving systems implement similar sets of interventions to move from one particular performance level to the next, irrespective of culture, geography, politics, or history.
4. A system’s context might not determine what needs to be done, but it does determine how it is done.
5. Six interventions occur equally at every performance stage for all systems.
6. Systems further along the journey sustain improvement by balancing school autonomy with consistent teaching practice.
While the study shows that systems in poor and fair performance achieve improvement through a center that increases and scripts instructional practice for schools and teachers, such an approach does not work for systems in ‘good’ performance onwards.
7. Leaders take advantage of changed circumstances to ignite reforms.
8. Leadership continuity is essential.
Leadership is essential not only in sparking reform but in sustaining it. Two things stand out about the leaders of improving systems. Firstly, their longevity. Secondly, improving systems actively cultivate the next generation of system leaders, ensuring a smooth transition of leadership and the longer-term continuity in reform goals.

Download and read the short, 4 page, Executive summary
or the Full report (126 pages). See attachments.