The ICSEI Story

For more than three decades ICSEI has focused on making schools around the world excellent and equitable. ICSEI’s purpose is simple yet profound:

Advancing the quality and equity of education by promoting and contributing to the improvement and effectiveness of schools and other educational institutions (ICSEI Constitution, revised 2019)

Members of ICSEI come from all corners of the earth, from diverse settings and hold a variety of perspectives, with representation from policy makers, practitioners and scholars. ICSEI conferences generally attract people from over 50 countries and have been organised by local members and committees around the world.

The breadth of backgrounds makes ICSEI unique.  The focus is schools: a concern for school effectiveness, school improvement, educational innovation and transformation, excellence in education, equity in education, educational policy, school differences and school effects. The lenses are research, policy and practice and the nexus between them. The forum is face-to-face and electronic as the members cross boundaries for serious discussion about what works to improves schools.

Schools and schooling are complex. ICSEI embraces the complexity and always looking for connections and synergies that honour that complexity.  ICSEI provides a space where different opinions and different perspectives are respected – not passively but intentionally through building personal trust among individuals and groups so that the many facets of our work can be listened to, extended, challenged, pondered and translated into policy and practice.