All Can Achieve

The inspiring account of how Philip Harris took on the near-impossible challenge of turning around failing state schools.

In 1986, the Harris Academy in Crystal Palace was a broken school, with a pass rate of 9 per cent, truancy of 60 per cent and teachers who seldom lasted longer than six months. Today, the Harris City Academy Crystal Palace is hailed as one of the best in the country.

This transformation was the blueprint for a national education revolution. Harris's achievement paved the way for the academies movement, now accounting for nearly half of England's schools.

The same remarkable effect can be seen throughout the Harris Federation, the most successful multi-academy trust in England, which runs fifty-five state academies with 45,000 students and 5,000 staff. Every single one is rated 'Good' or better by Ofsted, and seven were recently listed in an international report as 'World Class'.

The Harris revolution is also the story of the extraordinary improvement in our education system over the past twenty years. In 2009, England lagged at twenty-seventh in the world for maths and twenty-fifth for reading. In 2025, a PISA report showed it is the best-performing country in Europe and internationally trails only four nations.

All Can Achieve reveals the inside story of how this phenomenal change was wrought.