This article, written by a team of research-active teachers who are also senior leaders in a large, urban, comprehensive high school in the North of England, reports on their joint teacher inquiry project. This work has school-wide significance, given recent history, progressing from being graded as a "failing" school by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in 2009, to being judged a "good" school in 2013. The team's work developed in response to Ofsted's recommendation to identify features of "effective" pedagogies in their own subject-department lessons, with a view to disseminating these through school in an attempt to progress further. However, despite the pedagogical improvements made thus far, the data used to measure the success of the school still reads unfavourably when compared to similar schools nationally. The co-authors will challenge what "counts" as knowledge, achievement and success, and will argue that constraints placed on the school by budget, the standardized reform agenda, and high stakes accountability restrict attempts by the school to work in a more creative way as it strives to raise achievement and aims for an "outstanding" judgement from Ofsted.