Glaring characteristic features of effective schools

From July 2018 to the first quarter of 2019, my team and I had the experience of travelling extensively on a challenging but rewarding experiment of pushing a quick and dramatic solution to the problem of academic underachievement. At the end of the tour, the team had covered eight out of the 10 regions, missing the target by a whisker.

If ever there was a team that had a complete and solid view of what is happening and not happening in our public schools, it was the group of 10 effervescent Harvard trained education managers assembled in the first half of 2018. The mission was to promote a simple, unadorned yet audacious solution to the nagging challenge of underachievement. Albeit hastily assembled, the team that championed the turnaround programme freshly imported from the prestigious Harvard Graduate school of Education, was made of strong, uncompromising principled and purposeful school leaders. Included in the team were some of the finest school leaders the country has ever produced.