This report focuses on systems thinking and its place in education transformation. It reflects on key published literature and on specific outputs from the Education Development Trust's own programme of research. The report offers an overview of the evolution of systems thinking and the relevance for policymakers and practitioners as they tackle the 'learning crisis'. Drawing on the evidence obtained from published literature and on specific outputs from the Education Development Trust's own programme of research, the report identifies and details six important accelerators that are seem as core capabilities for policymakers to develop for rapid school improvement at scale, and which address common binding constraints in education systems. They are: (1) Vision and leadership; (2) Coalitions for change; (3) Delivery architecture including school collaboration; (4) Data for collective accountability and improvement; (5) Teacher and school leadership effectiveness; and (6) Evidence-informed policy and learning. Some reforms are comprehensive and may use all six accelerators; others may be more focused and only use one or two. A framework is offered to support systems thinking for education reform at scale. For policymakers and practitioners, the challenge with any framework is its implementation and the wider set of tensions that a framework alone cannot fully address. Outlined here are five of those tensions: (1) The need to fix the learning crisis while not forgetting about those who are not able to access education; (2) Looking at education as a system while at the same time recognising that education is part of a bigger system with interdependencies; (3) The desire to be evidence-informed yet the reality of operating in a political, economic, social and cultural context that at times has conflicting priorities; (4) The theory of education system reform versus the reality of the capacity of the system to implement that reform; and (5) The need to balance the focus on the system with a wider understanding of personal agency and community responsibility for education. The main advantage of systems thinking is that it expands the ranges of choices available for solving problems by broadening thinking and helping the articulation of problems in new and creative ways.