The Quest for Scale: achieving system-wide innovation and improvement in education

Abstract

The quest to achieve innovation and improvement at scale can be considered the holy grail of education reform, with governments and increasingly donor-funded initiatives, aspiring to achieve sustained, systemic innovation and improvement that reaches every student, in every classroom, in every school in New Zealand. Yet, despite the best of intentions, and a myriad of reform efforts over the past twenty years, encompassing system-wide school improvement strategies and structural reforms as well as smaller-scale initiatives targeting a particular aspect or group within education, there has been little demonstrable improvement in the enduring challenges facing our education system.