“So, This Is Special Measures” – How Does It Feel To Be The Head Of An ‘Inadequate’ School?
Zak Willis knows only too well, but he's not giving up
- by Zak Willis
“Therefore, Her Majesty’s Inspector is of the opinion …” She carried on with the rest of the script, then smiled. “There, that’s the horrible bit over with.” ‘As if’, I remember thinking.
The final judgement had not come as a shock to me – I had worked out her thinking on day one. She had made a few comments about grades and phrases in the framework, and I knew she was pushing towards ‘inadequate’. So much so, in fact, that I openly challenged her on it. She had already spoken to someone further up the Ofsted chain to clarify/reinforce her thinking, and the decision became somewhat inevitable. The second day became an exercise in trying to find enough bad stuff to write about.
I’m not whinging by the way – I feel as if I was treated with fairness. Some of the things inspectors saw in those two days were the stuff of nightmares – poor behaviour, hostile parents, and appalling weather meaning we had dreaded wet play.
So there we were, crammed into our meeting room with the inspection team, governors and LA representative, while she went through the findings, ending each section with the resounding thud of the ‘I’ word. Our governors looked distraught, the LA shell-shocked (especially as they had once again deemed us good only two weeks previously). I tried simply to retain my dignity, sitting tall, listening attentively, and absorbing as much as I could.
Hands shaken, visitors badges returned, my (brilliant, brilliant) deputy and I looked at one another as if to say, “Whatever next?”. We did what seemed most appropriate – smiled and hugged. (Only momentarily, we don’t do contact.)
As we walked back to the governors and LA, I remember thinking, “So this is special measures then”, the destination I had worked tirelessly to avoid my entire working life. I expected to be distraught. I had envisaged resignation letters being demanded and crowds of parents calling for my head. Yet I felt strangely calm, and not a little optimistic.
A state of limbo
What I loathed the most was that I was unable to tell the staff what had happened. Ofsted had been extremely clear – it must remain top secret until official. On Monday morning I walked into a staffroom of expectant faces, some still clinging to the hope that my radio silence all weekend was part of my typical theatricality, awaiting the big reveal, others who seemed to have worked out the news.
So it came as a shock to them all when I didn’t give them anything except a speech I had very carefully written the night before – probably the first time in my career I had ever truly ‘stuck to the script’. I can still recall the terribly crass and empty words with which I greeted my amazing colleagues: “Regrettably, at this time we are unable to share anything with you concerning last week’s inspection. We will notify you all when we have a completed report.” How unsatisfactory. How (and in truth, this is how I really felt) sad.
For the remaining four weeks of term, I was in a state of limbo. For the people who needed me the most – my staff – the uncertainty, lack of clarity and transformation from loud bloke with his desk in the corridor to a secretive, reserved presence, must have hurt. (It did, they’ve since told me). The process – although I understood its rationale – left me not only unable to communicate, but also unable to do what I’ve been trained to do since the day I became a headteacher: put things right.
Not only are you in limbo, but you are in an unnerving place where your every instinct is negated, where your desire to reach out is overridden, and where your ability to do what you know in your heart to be best is questioned, most often by yourself.
To compound matters, there is a small, elite band of people who have been entrusted with this most radioactive and sensitive of information who all look at you slightly strangely. They develop a skill that they probably never knew they had: the art of asking a simple question, but with many meanings. They all ask, “Are you alright?” but in so many different ways. There’s the one that means, ‘How can you possibly be OK in these circumstances?’ Another means, ‘How is the deeper person in all this?’. Then there’s the doubting one. They mean, ‘You’re still smiling and turning up every day, but honestly, how are you managing to hold up like this?’ Better than you, it would appear.
Ultimately, there is nothing to be said, and very little that’s allowed to be, so limbo remains firmly in place until…
The announcement
Finally the report was released and we could start to open up. It landed in time for an inset day set aside for, well, this.
I made the announcement, again using carefully crafted words, then gave them each a copy of the report and time to read it. There were tears. There was shock. There was great sadness.
An hour later, we reassembled. Much of the shock had been replaced by anger. Anger at the report itself: “We don’t recognise our school in this”. Anger at the process: “How did they reach that conclusion?”. Anger at people who had told us we were good enough. The word ‘responsibility’ was used repeatedly. Of course, having had time to assimilate this for myself, and having failed to go through any kind of angry stage, I was keen to put this to bed. Mollified but by no means pacified, our personal inquest continued.
Next came the governors. Many of them have been around this game too long to have not worked out what the invisible writing on the wall was. But again, anger.
Then the community. Again, anger. But not as I had expected. Standing in the playground on report release day was the first moment I felt truly worried. How would this one go?
To my utter joy, and with more gratitude than I knew I possessed, the reaction of both children and parents was unanimous: it’s not fair, it isn’t our school, you all work too hard, we’re not having it.
Letters of complaint were planned, press reporters were rebuffed, staff were told to carry on doing what they do. It is genuinely amazing that such adversity had in fact served to unite us.
It is, without question, the low point of my career. Having had six Ofsted reports that label my leadership as consistently good, this is the absolute nadir. Yet I will not moan about Ofsted, nor will you hear me trying to give justification. I am simply hoping to get the chance to do what I have always tried throughout my leadership career: to do the very best I can for a school community who needs and deserves it. If I can do that, quickly and well, then these low points will soon be forgotten.
Zak Willis is headteacher of Badock’s Wood Community Primary in Bristol. Find him at badockshead.blogspot.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at @willis_zak
