Improving Primary Schools, Improving Communities

This book shows how multi-ethnic urban primary schools can meet rigourous government targets when policy and practice are underpinned by social justice. Three schools, all with recent Ofsted reports praising their inclusivity and their constantly rising academic achievement, have submitted themselves to further scrutiny for this book. Tony Cotton brings the schools to life as he 'walks' us around them, and he intersperses his account with the words of the headteachers, teachers, pupils, parents and governors and with selected school documents to illustrate the egalitarian and collaborative way in which each is run. By showing how a collaborative ethos of the kinds he has found here has turned each into a successful school on all counts, he has provided a model for what community primary schools can be and a handbook for supporting development. This handbook will be invaluable on courses for aspiring and recently appointed headteachers and will also interest experienced headteachers and educational policy makers. Primary teachers will find much to enhance their practice. Book jacket.

Dr Tony Cotton works in the Faculty of Education at Nottingham Trent University and at the time of writing was Chair of Governors at Mellor Community Primary School and Jasbir Mann was Headteacher. Anna Hassan was Headteacher of Millfields and Stella Nickolay a senior teacher at Radford Primary School