The paper uses the framework of school effectiveness to examine schools working in diverse socio-economic conditions demonstrating different educational outcomes. The objective of this research is to extract the particular group of schools performing beyond expectations considering their social-economic context. We are going to analyze their policy strategy which allows them to achieve a high outcome without screening the children unlike the schools working in better social-economic environment.

This study is concentrated on the analysis of holistic effect upon school performance, which was studied through principals’ leadership, their managerial practices and ability to create effective schools. We are interested in which strategies let principals of schools with low level of social-economic background to achieve high educational outcome considering that these schools usually have a shortage of human and material resources.

We considered a wide range of managerial strategies such as enrollment policy, attracting specific group of parents, evaluation of school and teachers working processes, and priorities of managerial activities. The result of this study could be used to improve the functioning of schools facing challenges and provide a formative evaluation of organizational development.  

School performing beyond expectations should be discussed in a broader context of School Effectiveness Research (SER) which arises from a wide field of Educational Effectiveness Research (EER) studies (Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore, 1995; Teddlie and Reynolds, 2000; Reynolds, 2010; Reynolds et al, 2011; Reynolds et al, 2012, Harris et al, 2013).

Studies on school effectiveness explore complex interconnections among single factors and processes which result in interactions aimed at producing a higher quality of education in certain schools, whereby specific schools have the ability to have a positive influence on a student’s educational outcomes.

The concept of an effective school is connected with researching school level processes particularly those which are typical for schools working under the most difficult conditions (Mortimore et al, 1988; Hopkins, 2001; Reynolds et al, 2003; Harris, 2002; Muijs et al, 2004; Harris et al, 2006; Chapman et al, 2012; Harris and Hargreaves, 2012).

Schools considered as effective schools declared their responsibility for creating an educational environment and pedagogical instruments. They would allow them to form resilience among their students who are at risk living in the families and communities they find themselves in. Schools performing beyond expectations help their students to achieve higher educational goals in the face of unfavorable conditions.

This research presents the universality of the effective school model including Russian context. Thus this model allows us to analyze the Russian schools success experience and could be a base for the whole national school system. 

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