In among the pressures of delivering syllabi packed full of content, preparing for external inspection and producing test and exam outcomes that lead to a place sufficiently high up league tables, it is easy for the teacher or school leader in the UK to fail to lift their head up to survey objectively the education they are providing. To question what is being taught and how, what their goals and aims are, how they are supporting learners (and others in the school community) to thrive. And, importantly, whether there are other, and perhaps better, ways to ‘do’ education.

In this fascinating tour of a wide range of schools around the world, Adam J. Seldon shows us glimpses of different practices and challenges us to think more expansively, creatively and divergently. We meet the leader in Argentina who kisses 200 pupils each day to welcome them to school, follow the pupils on the Purchase Committee who barter and budget early each morning at Thai markets as they buy the food for the school lunches, and discover the peer correction system in place in Texas which places authority firmly with the students.

This book supports a mindset of exploration and institutional reflection. I recommend it to anyone who lacks the time to visit 80 schools worldwide themselves but is curious to challenge their thinking about why they do what they do in the way they do and whether there might just be a smarter approach out there.

In Around the World in 80 Schools, Adam distils the essence of schooling across the globe from the best of ingredients. His fermenting mix of experiences in such a wide variety of settings helps us to shed light on our own school system in a thoughtful and challenging way. The book is a real page-turner: absorbing, discomforting and reassuring.

Here is a clarion call from the front line of teaching and schools. Adam J. Seldon was born into teaching, knows it and loves it widely and wisely. This is a teacher and reformer who has ploughed his field well, season after season, term after term. He has sown and harvested.

Around the World in 80 Schools is essential and inspiring reading for teachers, educators and parents everywhere.

An original and gripping read that shows the power of travel and learning from other cultures to both inform and inspire.

I loved Around the World in 80 Schools. It is a generous, thoughtful and deeply humane exploration of what schools are for. Adam J. Seldon takes us beyond systems, structures and metrics to the lived reality of classrooms and communities across the world. It is rich in insight, alive with curiosity, and rooted in a profound respect for the work of teachers and the potential of young people. This is a book that invites us to think more deeply about the purpose of education and to ask better questions about what makes a good school.

Policy makers, teachers and parents alike should read this book to understand what constitutes a great education and, as importantly, encounter practical inspiration for how it can be achieved.

I enjoyed this book, which I found well-written and highly readable. Adam J. Seldon describes many of the 80 schools he visited around the world – spanning an impressive range of countries, contexts and cultures – in an engaging, reflective and insightful way.  He comments on and evaluates what he saw, but the focus is on what he learnt. It brought to mind Nancy Kline’s approach of ‘Seek first to understand …’ rather than to convince or to persuade. I found especially interesting what Adam had to say about school culture, following his visits to very different schools in countries ranging from South Africa to the USA, Finland to New Zealand.

As I read the book, it seemed to me that Adam was focusing on telling the stories of these schools and the people in them and allowing us to draw our own conclusions about what education really means – and how it might be more, or less, successful – which could help us to reflect on our own contexts, priorities and evidence of success.

I enjoyed this book enormously – which is annoying, because Adam keeps showing us schools that are bold, hopeful and gloriously bothered about young people, and I found myself muttering, ‘Why aren't we all doing more of this?’

Around the World in 80 Schools is a generous book, full of stories and ideas, but beneath it runs a quiet dissatisfaction with education as a transactional exercise. I recognise that sense of botheredness. I share it. Adam doesn’t offer silver bullets – thank goodness – but he does offer possibility. And sometimes that’s exactly what tired educators need: not certainty, but permission to imagine better.

Personal and professional in equal measure, this is a remarkable book. It could easily have been a travelogue, full of interesting narrative and anecdotes, but it is so much more. It is studded with academic references and illuminating links – and has a powerful structure based around big issues and questions which are all current and relevant, which gives the book real shape and purpose. Adam J. Seldon is a fine writer and great travelling companion who has created a book that is worth reading on a range of levels.