The illusion of leadership
Everyone knows what's needed to turn around a struggling school: strong leadership. In order for it to be deemed necessary for school to be consigned to 'special measures,' something has to have gone badly wrong. It's more than likely true that poor leadership will be at the heart of the problem. So, the school is taken over and a new 'strong leader' is parachuted in to turn it around. This tends to be fairly straightforward. Very bad (and very good) schools conform to the Anna Karenina principle: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” [...]
