David Allinson & Rosemary Bailey 
Adventurous School [PDF ebook] 
Vision, community and curriculum for primary education in the twenty-first century

This is a topical study of innovative and original practice in three primary schools. It aims to illustrate how they have made their schools successful. After an introduction and a background chapter colleagues describe the vision for their school, how it has come about and how they are putting it into practice in adventurous and exciting ways. Secondly, they describe their local context, who they serve and how they have revisited their purpose as a result of getting to understand more about their local area and setting. Thirdly, they give a picture of how they conceptualise, plan and implement their curriculum and design adventurous learning. Their primary focus is to create real learning for life – life as it is now and also life in the future and a broader view of the learning experiences and skills children need to be citizens in the world as it will be in their adult lifetime. It looks at the ways in which the three schools have taken the power to make decisions about their school improvement priorities in ways that give their pupils a central and active rather than tokenistic role. It is about learning and leadership for everyone including the pupils. ‘The Adventurous School’ is characterised in the book as one that is creative and ingenious, develops a confident spirit and a hardy disposition, has a map and planned routes but is not rigid about the journey, is evolutionary, travels with others, takes risks, is questing, questioning and enquiring and is there for something more than itself.