New head teacher

[OrmIrian]

Our last head left about 18m ago, leaving the school in a complete mess. We had a disastrous Ofsted and the finances are chaotic. A new temporary head was appointed by the LEA to sort the place out. He is fantastic and has done wonders. At our interim inspection every area that was failing was now satisfactory or good, the children like him and he's very approachable. And now he's been appointed full-time which is great news in itself, but it also means that he liked the school enough to want to stay. Such a huge relief .

DS#1 is leaving in Sept but DD still has 2 years to go, and DS#2 has only just started so it really matter to us that the ht is the right one.

Thats sounds like good news, don't you think that when head teachers have been there a while they start to get stale, so it is good when a new broom comes in a sweeps clean.

Wah! I had given up expecting a response

Thanks tensmum. I am sure you are right. The sad thing about the old head was that he was brought in with a great fanfare and he made lots of changes and everyone liked him....until he cleared off suddenly. To be fair to the man he had suffered multiple bereavements recently and was off ill with stress for nearly a year before he finally resigned. But it did the school no good at all.

My DS's primary school has a new head who has been there for 2 years. Although she may tick all the right boxes, she has no skills with either the children or the parents, and after many complaints to the board of governors, not getting anywhere, many parents are voting with their feet and taking their children out of the school. Also the deputy head and many teachers have also left. My DS is happy at the school, and so I see no reason to move him, but does anyone have any experience of a school remaining good even with a bad Head?

DD has a new head starting on Monday

It remains to be seen how good she is, but fingers crossed

frankie - I think it would be hard to do that. I've not known it but my experience isn't that wide. It often seems that schools that suddenly improve or worsen have had a new head recently. The secondary that DS#1 is going to soon had a new head about 5 years ago and she has turned the place around completely. Wouldn't have contemplated sending DS there before that.

Hope it goes OK mamag. I bet she's even more nervous

I have to say though that ds had a new head about three years ago, and while she has been great with the school and the kids, she has awful interpersonal skills, she can't look you in the eye when you speak to her. argh.