Case studies

CASE STUDY  No. 3

HMI had judged this West Midlands secondary school as satisfactory in most areas with the exception of the English Department and the Sixth Form. 

The school turned to Interim Management for specialist support in these two specific areas. Following in-depth consultations with the school, we assigned one of our associates who is an English and Drama specialist and who also has extensive experience of School Improvement and project management.
The Interim head had worked with Creative Education on a previous, particularly challenging assignment. He was, therefore, well placed to identify the level of help we could provide.

A) The Sixth Form

Our associate acted as Interim Head of Sixth Form. The key objective was to ensure that the sixth form would pass the next HMI inspection as, having failed two previous inspections, the school was in danger of losing its sixth form altogether.

There were three main areas of concern:
1) Poor attendance
2) The misuse of study time
3) Unsatisfactory monitoring and evaluation

1) Attendance
The attendance issues were tackled by clarifying and enforcing the school’s existing measures, by simplifying the system for recording absences and by introducing student mentoring to identify the reasons why they were not attending or arriving late. This allowed our associate to deal with the students’ individual issues.

2) Study time
A more rigorous approach to the use of study time was established. This was achieved through the use of study diaries, the monitoring of project work and homework and by encouraging students to take responsibility for the planning and resourcing of their own 'free time'.

3) Monitoring and evaluation
Working with the 14-19 coordinator, the interim sixth form head instigated the close monitoring of tutors and students to make sure that all school procedures were being undertaken and followed through.