It employs six stages:
- Imagine
- Understand
- Plan
- Build
- Lead
- Transform
Using a mix of analysis and detailed studies of a number of schools in England and around the world, the book explores how some schools are already moving from imagination to success in their own context by acting upon key insights which change their relationship with their communities.
The core message is that schools acting alone cannot achieve the necessary improvement and transformation. The book links future visioning to community engagement to the new perception of leadership this will need.
It clearly demonstrates the potential for a step-change in thinking, away from the school as an institution, whose sole focus is on institutional improvement, towards outward-facing schools engaged in community transformation.
By refocusing in this way. schools can make a significant contribution to developing their entire community's capacity to learn, crucially not least among those for whom they have statutory responsibility.
If educational success is, in part, a function of high social capital, then educational leadership has to make the development of social capital a priority. Central to this approach is the concept of schools as agents of regeneration both for themselves and for their communities.
