This prescient book illustrates what can be done to provide creative teaching and learning and fe-engage bored students, now that schools have been freed from the narrow focus on targets and the standards agenda. Based on an independent two-year research study, it describes what two schools in disadvantaged areas of England did to transform themselves, how they excited and energised staff and students, raised attainment and won the schools schools of Creativity status. The cross-curricular thematic projects draw on a drama-based pedagogy that brings together students' experiences, real-life issues and the academic curriculum in extended periods of learning. This model of innovative creative teaching and curriculum change is discussed by the innovators - the headteachers, teachers and the specialist consultants, who include Dorothy Heathcote. They speak frankly about the process and problems of change and they outline the sound theoretically-informed pedagogy and the issues that arose in its practical implementation. Its vision and inspiration and its practical teaching strategies make this a book for everyone involved in secondary education, principally teachers and headteachers, policy makers and HEI programmes for initial teacher training and professional development in education. And although these award winning schools are both in England, the issues raised are relevant across the anglophone world, where schools are yearning to transcend the prescriptive standards-driven curriculum, however great the challenge. Book jacket.