The Past, Present and Future of School Improvement: Towards the Third Age

The article outlines the three phases that school improvement has been through since the mid‐1980s, paying particular attention to the characteristics of the recent ‘third age’ improvement paradigm. It is argued that these new models of improvement stand a chance of overcoming the difficulties that past improvement has had in affecting outcomes, and a number of areas of potential development for the paradigm are outlined for it to fulfil its promise, particularly in the areas of context specificity, focusing on learning in classrooms and concentrating on understanding ‘the capacity for improvement’. The contributions of ‘Third Age’ school improvement to resolving a number of conundrums that have affected the field are also explored.