This handbook is an important developmental tool for schools and educational leaders seeking to develop and promote wider organisational understanding of (and subsequent engagement with) the implications for learning of the Every Child Matters agenda.  In essence, the text is designed to provide a structure and a practical scaffold for professional development/deliberation within the drive to meet the individual learning needs of every child, including the more able.

As the focus of the work is on the professional mapping of current provision against the aspiration to deliver a client-centred (ie child-centred) learning environment, it also has a key role to play in supporting effective school self-review and improvement planning within the context of the Self Evaluation Form (SEF) and central government’s New Relationship with Schools. Typically the activity-based approach encourages whole-school, team or individual questioning around current performance with a view to identifying areas for improvement.

The organisation of the material through such related though discrete topics as the thinking curriculum; learning styles; assessment for learning; learning to learn; mentoring; personal learning plans and student voice allows it to be used as the springboard for a long-term yet coherent developmental programme of transformation and training. Equally, however, it allows headteachers and CPD managers in schools and local authorities to focus on particular areas of need or interest within a specifically targeted training offer.

Clearly, any organisation investing significant resources of time and effort in an improvement programme of such importance will need to be assured both of the authoritative nature of the materials being considered and that they are not being led down a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to such complex and locally determined issues. John West-Burnham (senior visiting research fellow at the Centre for Educational Leadership, University of Manchester) and Max Coates (programme Director of the London Leadership Centre) certainly have the bona fides to inspire confidence, as their current work for the National College of School Leadership suggests.

Reviewing the materials from the perspective of a School Improvement Partner, as well as from the point of view of more able children in schools, however, I was also impressed with the interrogative as opposed to the didactic approach taken by the authors in seeking to enable schools to arrive at their own solutions to increased personalisation through structured and informed self-evaluation. It also seemed to me that many of the important questions of learning raised by the materials were appropriate questions for young people to consider. In this sense, the materials could equally form the basis of a rigorous audit of student views regarding the quality of learning in the school, thus providing significant evidence of the impact (and the variation of impact on particular groups) of current learning methods on children across the school.

This is, in short, a labour-saving, flexible and timely intervention and one that comes highly recommended to anyone involved in the management and leadership of educational change.