Gladesmore Community School is a highly regarded community school in Tottenham. Having been rated an outstanding school by Ofsted on three separate occasions, it has a track record of providing high quality education to a diverse community of young people, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The school has a well-established culture and is proud of being a community school. The pastoral support and care that comes as part of this is key to the school’s success. Pentir had previously supported the Governors with the appointment of the Headteacher but much had changed since that time.

At the briefing, the Governors were clear that it was important to appoint an individual who would build on what the school does well but also lead further improvement and change, given the need to respond to the current challenges in education.

It was important to involve those at the school in the process of appointment and we started this through briefing meetings with senior leaders, middle leaders, staff and students. Given the context it was important that we attracted a diverse field of qualified candidates. A combination of headhunting and targeted advertisement was used to generate the best possible field of candidates. Our search work specifically allowed us to proactively engage with candidates.

Having generated a strong field of candidates we carried out preliminary interviews and then worked with Governors to devise an assessment centre which allowed the assessment of fit alongside competency. The result was that Governors interviewed a high quality field and had a choice of appointable candidates.