* the behaviour of teachers, with effective schools providing
good models of behaviour through teachers exhibiting good
time keeping and a clearly apparent willingness to deal with
pupils' personal and social problems;
* management in the classroom, with effective schools
possessing teachers who prepared lessons in advance, who
kept the attention of the whole class, who managed to
maintain discipline in an unobtrusive way, who focused
upon the rewarding of good behaviour and who were able to
take swift action to deal with any disruption by pupils;
* the management structure, with effective schools
combining firm leadership by the headteacher with a
decision making process in which all teachers felt that their
views were represented.
On the other hand, research carried out in Wales (Reynolds et al, 1989) found that more
effective schools did have smaller class sizes, more favourable pupil/teacher ratios and
were of smaller pupil numbers overall. But other findings were similar to those reported
above, and Reynolds (in Riddell & Brown, 1991) stresses the importance of an
'incorporative approach', involving pupils and parents. Generally the secondary school
studies are in line with those for primary schools. Reynolds notes also that it is not
necessarily easy to bring school effectiveness knowledge into ineffective schools.
The research findings reported in this section are based on empirical studies of primary
and secondary schools in Britain and other industrialized countries. Of course there are
many differences between these schools and typical schools in developing countries,
such as resourcing levels, socio-cultural factors, educational background of the teachers,
and patterns of organisation. Nevertheless, there may be lessons to be learnt. One
striking feature is that the findings relate much more to process than to input, and it may
be that research in developing countries should pay much more attention to the former.
Fuller (1987) is among those who make this point. He argues that we should not just
focus on the effects of material inputs, such as textbook availability or overall school
expenditure levels, but ask how material ingredients actually are mobilized and
organized within schools and classrooms.
It could be that significant progress would be made in Third World school effectiveness
by greater attention to some or all of the process variables such as classroom
management, school climate, and institutional leadership. The cost of improvements in
these areas would be low in comparison with large scale material inputs, and the key
would appear to be in-service training for teachers, school principals and inspectors.