Another one bites the dust...the demise of the superhead (chapter 8)

So another superhead is leaving his school.  Professor Sir George Berwick CBE, according to a letter from Ravens Wood governors (quoted in The Observer yesterday), had "...reached retirement age and will officially retire on 10 October 2013."

There is an investigation going on about BTec marking at the school. 

David Triggs is retiring from AET - the large group of academies.

There have been questions about standards failing to rise quickly enough.

Point 1
Leadership is fundamentally important, but in my experience it is rarely about one person.  In my own organisation, The Key, leadership is part of the culture as much as it is what I personally provide.  It's about taking responsibility and ownership and seeing things through.  My role is to assemble the talents into as happy an alignment as possible, clarify our direction and vision.  Sometimes a colleague provides much more direction or vision than I do.  Quite often in fact.  Sometimes others find ways of aligning the talents more effectively than I do.  Any award we got for strong leadership would definitely have to be shared.

Point 2
The pressure on schools/academies that have outstanding status, that might be teaching schools, where the head/principal is a National Leader of Education - is too great.  If Ofsted downgrades the school in any way, bang goes the teaching school status - and the whole house comes tumbling down.  And Ofsted's judgments can often depend on how loudly and insistently a member of the inspection team argues their case.  Something's got to give.  The current system is simply too blunt.  There must be a way of keeping standards really high, while making things a bit less 'cliff edge'.