Shri Lanka and Burundi. In some cases, for example the Shri Lanka case study, there
are illustrations of how relatively small inputs into quality improvement programmes
appear to result in large gains in achievement and participation. Others argue the
importance of ensuring political will exists to improve school conditions and
performance and that the benefits of improved educational access and quality must be
expressed in terms which offer gains to those in power as well as those on the margins
if they are to be reflected in quality improvement programmes.
Though it is sometimes difficult to untangle those findings that have general utility and
those that are specific to particular circumstances the school achievement literature
provides a lot of food for thought about the relative importance of different types of
intervention to improve school quality. It encourages clearer definitions of the attributes
of "good" schools and the kind of achievement that is valued. It also focuses attention
towards those inputs and processes that are manipulable through education policy and
those whose locus of control lies elsewhere. Finally it can illustrate gaps between policy
intentions and actual outcomes, thus drawing attention to implementation problems.
What this kind of analysis cannot do should not be required of it. It cannot generate
policy prescriptions across widely differing countries and education systems that do
more than point the way towards worthwhile possibilities that need exploration and
validation at the intra country level. It is here that studies can provide the most reliable
guidance for assistance targeted on areas where it will have the most impact. At this
level one of the central questions of the school achievement literature invites inversion.
It is not so much a question of what makes a good school - good schools are self
evidently not the problem. It is more a question of why are some schools, often with
apparently similar resource endowments, judged inferior to others and how can their
performance be improved at replicable levels of cost?
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