Effective School Management

Special measures and superheads
At the end of Ofsted inspection, the team will decide whether it is necessary
to put the school into one of three categories:
(1) The school is failing, or likely to fail, to give its pupils an acceptable
standard of education, and thus requires special measures.
(2) Although providing an acceptable standard of education, nevertheless it
has serious weaknesses in one or more areas of its activities.
(3) Although not requiring special measures or having serious weaknesses,
it is underachieving.
If the school has a sixth form, it is judged to be ‘inadequate’ if it falls into one
of the first two categories above, and this judgement is separate from that on
the main school.
HMI are asked to corroborate that a school requires special measures and
may well visit the school to test whether the inspection team’s judgement is
well founded. HMI corroboration is not needed in the cases of serious
weaknesses or underachieving, but in all cases HMI will visit the school to
monitor progress in rectifying the problems. The LEA is required to support
schools in special measures or with serious weaknesses.
We sincerely hope that you never find yourself in the situation of having to
cope with the aftermath of such devastating Ofsted judgements and indeed if
you and other leaders follow the advice of this book, you are very unlikely to.
It is quite common for LEAs and/or governing bodies to pressurize head-
teachers of schools in special measures to resign, and to replace them with
headteachers seconded from other schools (often nicknamed ‘superheads’).
In extreme cases of schools failing to come out of special measures, they have
been closed and re-opened (sometimes with a change of name) under ‘Fresh
Start’ procedures. A school judged to need special measures or to have
serious weaknesses will be in shock, perhaps with staff denying that there are
serious problems, or becoming very demoralized. Stoll and Myers (1998)
include some very useful case studies of how schools in such situations were

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MANAGING THE ENVIRONMENT
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turned around, and these and other studies indicate that a process similar to
coping with bereavement is common. The leaders in such schools have a
short time-frame (usually a maximum of two years) in which to bring the
school to an acceptable standard. This implies planning for a mixture of
changes which are highly visible and which restore the belief of staff, parents
and governors that someone knows what is to be done, with other changes
that take longer because they deal with the need to change ethos, values and
structures.
THE SCHOOL IN THE COMMUNITY
There are now some impressive examples of how schools can play a leading
role in developing their local community, thus fulfilling the oft-neglected
requirement in the Education Reform Act 1988 and subsequent legislation,
for schools to promote the development not only of pupils but also of society.
Government initiatives such as Education Action Zones and the requirement
placed on councils to establish Local Strategic Partnerships (on which schools
can be represented) have provided new opportunities for school leadership
to extend beyond school boundaries. Partnerships involving schools are
helping to build communities and establish community cohesion. A
government programme on ‘Extended Schools – Schools at the Heart of their
Community’ is supported by a DfES team and £100m funding over three
years (www.teachernet.gov.uk/extendedschools). A case study of this from
Barrow-in-Furness illustrates what can be achieved with imaginative
leadership.