Raising the Stakes : From Improvement to Transformation in the Reform of Schools

Raising the Stakes provides an understanding of the breadth of resources that are needed in order to provide a quality education to all students so that every individual, organisation and institution can become a stakeholder in the enterprise.

This comprehensive book draws on best practice in several countries to show how resources can be allocated to help achieve high expectations for all schools. The book demonstrates how schools can move from satisfaction with improvement to accepting the challenge to transform, identifying and exploring the need to align four kinds of resources:

• intellectual capital, that is, the knowledge and skill of talented professionals
• social capital, being support in the form of cash, expertise and advocacy drawn from a range of individuals, organisations, agencies and institutions in the broader community
• financial capital, which must be carefully targeted to ensure that these resources are aligned and focused on priorities for learning; and finally
• spiritual capital, which can be viewed in a religious sense or in terms of the culture and values that bring coherence and unity to these endeavours.

The authors also outline a Student-Focused Planning Model with particular attention to the deployment of resources to support each student and embracing the notion of personalising learning.

Practitioners and researchers reading this book will be inspired to work more closely in networking knowledge about how ‘high quality’ and ‘high equity’ can be achieved. Raising the Stakes is essential reading for those with the responsibility of ensuring that resources are acquired and allocated to achieve the best possible outcomes for students.

Brian J. Caldwell, Jim Spinks