David Nockles

Determining Effective Schools for Parents and Adolescents: How Parents and Students Perceive Schools David Nockles

How do parents and adolescents determine an effective school? It is all too easy to rest on simplistic yet emotive factors that do little to provide information about the effectiveness or otherwise of a school. Parents and their teenage children should be prepared to listen to others, particularly other students when examining how best to choose a school. This book helps parents and their teenage children to frame this discussion by examining the effective schools and improving schools literature but more importantly focusses on student voice as a determining factor in effective schools. While there is considerable research and information about effective and improving schools, little focusses on the perceptions of students. Teachers, parents and academics have thus far framed the debate. For a school to be truly effective it must be so for the students. Teenagers have a great deal to say and when it comes to what makes an effective school their views are important and should be heard.