The next big challenge: inclusive school improvement

explanation of how when ideas ‘travel ’ to other times and situations, they can lose some of their ‘original power and rebelliousness ’ (Slee, 2004). In this sense, the movement for school effectiveness and school improvement shows all the signs of jetlag. At its point of origin, it was based on a rebellion against conventional explanations about educational failure, particularly in urban contexts (Edmonds, 1979). More recently it seems to have become domesticated into a political discourse that stifles discussion and struggle. As a result, in national contexts such as my own, where reform policies have been based on a narrow view of school effectiveness, strategies for school improvement can, in practice, act as a barrier to the development of a more inclusive education system. In this paper, I reflect on my own school improvement experience in order to explore ways of developing more powerful strategies for moving schools and school systems in an inclusive direction. Improving the Quality of Education for All I believe that the major challenge facing educational systems throughout the world is that of how to foster inclusion. This means that in economically poorer countries, th