Steve Superhead
“I promise this,” says Steve Super-Head. “My imminent appointment as acting head at Sinkfast Community School will not impinge on my complete commitment to the continued success of our own academy.”
For two months, rumours have circled the staffroom, like vultures waiting to feast: Steve’s absence for days on end, the hopeful glint in the deputy’s eye, talk of an impending meltdown. And now the truth: that Steve is very much alive, and is set to become headteacher of a second ailing school.
Admittedly, their own school’s turnaround had been remarkable. Out went dusty old Jean, the head who had overseen two decades of slow decline, and in storm-trooped Steve and his crack team of headhunted suits. They promoted the wheat, they made the chaff re-apply for their jobs, and they waterboarded unsuspecting middle-managers with rivers of data. There were rumours of a PGI scheme, and even private audiences with Gove himself.
Subsequent appearances by Steve are noteworthy for their brevity and drama. Each one brings a jaw-dropping announcement: longer days, tighter targets, the bulldozing of the staff room and, finally, the merger with Sinkfast.
“Nothing changes,” Steve tells confused parents, in a webcast intended to be reassuring. It’s then another two weeks before he is seen again, this time scattering a crowd of mooching Year 10 pupils from the school gates with his brand new Hummer H3.
That morning, while Steve delivers an assembly entitled “bigger, better, stronger”, the key stage 3 co-ordinator turns to her colleague, and whispers fearfully: “Look at his eyes. I swear to God they’ve turned red.”
And as staff and pupils look on silently, with increasing dread, they see it for themselves: Steve Super-Head is no longer Steve.
He is Clone of Steve, one of many…and he is coming soon to a school near you.
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