New headteacher?

When coming into a school for the first time as headteacher, you face three types of scenario. It may be that you are coming into a school that is already functioning correctly, with all the systems and procedures, values and attitudes in place to create a successful school. Or it may be that you are setting up a new school and all of that work has to be done for the first time. The third scenario is that you are taking over a school that has already been in existence for some time and yet is dysfunctional in some way or ways. The problem here is that you are not working with a blank canvas on which you can freely create your own vision. Rather, you are having to change a situation which is already fixed in many ways. However, it is not as if you have been given a canvas with a picture already on it that you can just paint over; the dysfunctional school is constantly creating itself through the realisation of negative attitudes and values and through poor systems and routines. The first thing that can be done is to introduce new policies and practices, changing the uniform for example, but this only affects the superficial, outward level of the school’s identity. The underlying level is slower to respond to change and will actively resist, especially if you attempt to implement change in a top-down, authoritarian manner.

So taking over a dysfunctional school is the most difficult of the three scenarios because you need all the energy and vision required for setting up a new school while at the same time having to battle against those obstacles which are the source of the problem you have inherited. What do you do when you are up against entrenched, negative staff and student attitudes (‘this is a bad school and is never going to change’) and a governing body that is responsible for the mess in the first place but blames the teachers?