The Systems Thinking School: Redesigning Schools from the Inside-Out [Paperback]

This book examines the school as an operational organization through the lens of systems thinking. In this way it serves as an invitation to look again at schools and how they operate as learning systems. It begins by showing exactly why our inherited, industrial school model, can never be made to work effectively no matter how hard school leaders try or how well schools are judged.

This book uses systems thinking to explain and describe the management unlearning and new learning needed to create deep and fundamental changes to the way schools operate as complete learning entities. It explains why the reinstatement of the personal tutor in a vertical system is essential to the creation of a learning organization within a complete home/school operational learning process; one capable of building a values driven and more purposeful school culture within a more relevant and coherent society.

Peter A Barnard has been involved in education for over 40 years as a successful high school principal, trainer and writer. He is a passionate advocate of vertical tutoring as the managerial means of both understanding and meeting the many challenges that schools face internationally.

Peter Barnard draws upon his extensive leadership experience to lay out a provocative and stimulating approach to school improvement. Calling for no less than a revolution in the way we think about schools, Barnard demands rigor and intellect from those charged with leading the education of the next generation. But this is theory grounded in practice and will be an invaluable tool to anyone interested in making our schools better. Sir David Bell KCB, Vice-Chancellor University of Reading

At the heart of Peter Barnards groundbreaking but striking analysis of the industrial school model, is a plea to stop tinkering with peripheral parts, reforms and add-ons, and to see each school as a complete organisational system in its own right. In his book, Barnard unlocks the secrets ol“Ý