The High Reliability Schools (HRS) program was designed to improve school performance on measures of school effectiveness, including improved attendance, reduced disciplinary referrals, and increased scores on academic measures at the school and district level. The use of High Reliability Organizational (HRO) structures was proposed in 1993 by Stringfield  following the work of Roberts (2004), Weick (1993, van Straten (2008) and others in the fields of emergency medicine, aircraft control and firefighting. The HRS program was first implemented in a suburban setting in England and later in a large, urban school district in the north of England. The most sophisticated model was implemented in the Welsh Ronda, first in four high schools and then across all of the schools in one Local Authority. Major tenets include focus on a few goals, analysis of data, development of standard operating procedures, attention to small flaws,  and continuous staff development.   

The success of this model was documented first at the end of the intervention, but more remarkably the improvement in school performance continued in these schools for more than a decade after the initial implementation.  The research findings are reported in Schaffer, E., Stringfield, S.,  & Reynolds, D., (2012), Stringfield, S., Reynolds, D., & Schaffer, E., (2008) and  Reynolds, D., Stringfield, S., & Schaffer, E (2006).  The success of the program was replicated in the United States in a school district in Kentucky will success on a number of measures as documented by Shelton (2010). 

Continued interest in the model led to publications in a number of journals and the use of these findings in the development of other programs and strategies for work in schools. In the fall of 2014, a Welsh regional agency responsible for the continual improvement of schools, contacted the authors and developers of the program and suggested that the principles be adapted to rural districts in the west of Wales. For the developers this was an intriguing and unique opportunity.

Early discussion with leadership in the region led to meetings with school leadership withn the region. Thirty schools in three Local Authorities (LA) decided to join the effort. In discussion with the heads of the schools, it became clear that there were modifications needed to update the processes and create strategies that would be successful in the unique LAs. The authors also believed that the High Reliability Schools program should be reviewed to determine if the basic tenants remain intact and what changes in implementation are influenced by the state of current research. 

Reynolds, D., Stringfield, S., & Schaffer, E (2006). Highly Reliable Schools. In Harris, A, and Chrispeels, J. Improving Schools and Educational Systems: International Perspectives . London. Routledge. ( pp.56-77) Roberts, K. H., K. Yu, and D. van Stralen. 2004. 'Patient Safety as an Organizational Systems Issue: Lessons from a Variety of Industries.' In Patient Safety Handbook, edited by B. J. Youngberg and M. Hatlie, pp. 169-86. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers Schaffer, E., Stringfield, S., & Reynolds, D., (2012). Sustaining Turnaround at the School and District Levels: The High Reliability Schools Project at Sandfields Secondary School. Journal of Education for Students Place at Risk, 17. 108-127. Shelton, T., (2010) The Effects of School System Superintendents, School Boards and Their Interactions on Longitudinal Measures of Districts' Students' Mathematics Achievement. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Louisville ERIC Number: ED528159 Stringfield, S., Reynolds, D., & Schaffer, E., (2008). Improving Secondary Students’ Academic Achievement Through a Focus on Reform Reliability: 4 and 9-year Findings from HRS. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 19 (4), 409-428. Stringfield, S. (1993). Barriers and pathways to meaningful reforms: The need for High Reliability Organizational structures (HROs). In A. Montgomery, R. Rossi, N. Legters, E. McDill, J. McPartland, & S. Stringfield (Eds.), Educational reforms and students at risk: A review of the current state of the art (pp. xi -158). Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research. van Stralen, D., Calderon, R., Lewis, J and Roberts,K. , Changing a Pediatric Sub-Acute Facility to Increase Safety and Reliability. Patient Safety and Health Care Management, Vol. 7, 259-282, 2008 Weick, K. E., & Roberts, K. H. (1993). Collective Mind in Organizations: Heedful Interrelating on Flight Decks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 357-381