About the Author - Short biography Dedication Table of Contents Disclaimer Foreword by Lord Baker of Dorking and the Rt. Hon. David Blunkett MP Introduction Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations 1. What makes a good school? 2. How to choose a good school for your child 3. Why we need to empower our headteachers 4. Why we must improve standards of literacy 5. How to ensure that all English 16 and 17 year-olds remain in full time education or training 6. How to improve low-attaining schools 7. Are academies a good thing? 8. Halting the demise of the United Kingdom’s science and engineering base 9. How information communications technology (ICT) can be used to improve learning 10. How specialist schools have helped to raise standards in English secondary schools 11. Why our schools should become centres of community life 12. How we can better integrate our ethnic minorities into their communities? 13. Are Schools with a religious character a good thing? 14. Who will champion our vulnerable children? 15. Why and how all our gifted and talented children should be nurtured 16. What lessons can we learn from other countries which have high standards in their schools? 17. Could the British education reforms be introduced into the United States? Appendix 1: Example of a Parent/School Agreement Appendix 2: The Admission of Students to the Harris City Academy Crystal Palace Appendix 3: How to calculate the value added of a secondary school by Professor David Jesson of York University Appendices 4 and 5: Analysis of a sample group of English schools on the list of 638, who in 2007 did not achieve 5+ A*-C at GCSE including maths and English using the David Jesson Value Added and improvement approach Appendix 6: Standard curriculum used by the Summer Institute for the Gifted in the United States Appendix 7: PISA rating of OECD countries by performance in maths, science and reading Bibliography