Chris Brislen remembers the exact date he arrived at John Baskeyfield VC CofE Primary School in Stoke-on-Trent for two reasons. First, because it was his birthday. Second, because, right after the assembly in which he introduced himself as the school’s new headteacher, Ofsted phoned.

It was 20 May 2013. The inspectors wanted to come in the very next day.

“We failed with spectacular style,” Brislen says. “I remember standing in the car park with my colleague Sean Thomson and I asked him if he thought that committing career suicide was legal.”

The school was already in special measures, so Ofsted issued an ultimatum: if significant improvements were not made by November, it was possible that the school would close.

For many headteachers, this scenario would be the stuff of nightmares, but Brislen took it in his stride. John Baskeyfield wasn’t the first struggling school he had turned around and it wouldn’t be the last. Brislen, you see, is a “fixer head”.

Fixer heads are a rare breed of school leader. They thrive on the challenge of reversing the fortunes of schools in the most difficult circumstances possible. They take the jobs most don’t want - and they almost always get results.

What is it that helps them thrive where others struggle, pulling schools up from “inadequate” to “good” or “outstanding” judgements?

Unravelling the education DNA of this celebrated group throws up plenty of answers to that question, but it throws up an interesting problem, too: could the very thing that means they can have an impact on so many schools ultimately threaten their ability to have a long-term impact on any of them?

Different characters

Talk to enough fixer heads and one thing quickly becomes clear: success is not necessarily a matter of personality. The sheer range of different characters who are doing this work attests to that.

“I’ve seen heads who are very low-key but are quietly determined. People respond to them because they see that they are reliable and trustworthy,” says Sir Tim Brighouse, former schools commissioner for London, who led Labour’s school improvement plan, the London Challenge. “Then there are the extroverts who are outwardly much more like the heroes or champions. I honestly believe they both can do it.”

This is not to say every headteacher has the potential to be a fixer. Sir Steve Lancashire, chief executive of primary academy trust Reach2, which has been responsible for turning around at least 18 schools to date, points out that while fixer heads are a diverse bunch, there are some traits that are essential for this type of leadership.

“They have to like a challenge and also not be afraid to be unpopular, because often you will be, initially,” he says.

Brislen agrees with this. He suggests that resilience is essential if a head is going to be able to cope with the inevitable setbacks they will face during a turnaround. “It’s a kind of doggedness, a refusal to give up,” he says.

And Niall McWilliams, headteacher of the Oxford Academy, which went from being one of the worst-performing secondary schools in the country to being in the top 20, adds that there is also an element of risk to turnarounds, which a successful fixer head will not shy away from.

“If I didn’t do this, I would probably be doing something terrible, like gambling all my money away on horses,” he jokes. “You have to be a risk-taker. You also have to prepare yourself for the possibility that it might not work out and not be afraid of that. You have to come in and battle every day and stick to your principles.”

While the assumption may be that the confidence to do this would be something innate, an admission of the fixers is that they build confidence through experience. Establishing a method for turning around a failing school will take trial and error, according to Laura Jones*, a primary headteacher who has turned around two struggling schools.

But once you find the formula that works for you, she says it can be replicated in every school you encounter. “I think the heads that are successful in schools that need turning round and external organisations that turn schools around have a formula somehow for it. Whatever that formula is, it’s really specific and doesn’t waste time,” she explains.

That formula can be different for each fixer. A key trait is a competitive impulse that, in most cases, promotes a healthy rivalry that benefits schools.

Lancashire, for example, suggests that there is a standard timescale for how long it should take to turn a school around, and fixer heads watch each other’s progress with interest.

“I see it as friendly banter,” he says. “Year one you are making all the major changes, year two you are embedding those changes, and by year three it should be ‘job done’.”

So the picture thus far is of confident, resilient individuals who are rigorous in finding solutions, ruthless in enforcing those solutions and who are, perhaps, a little cocky, too.

This would fit the profile many have of fixer heads: unbending, unemotional and focused on process. After all, this is a job that, as Lancashire hinted earlier, often makes you unpopular. Few turnarounds happen without difficult conversations, confrontations and some staff leaving the school.

But the truth is that these school leaders are not the improvement robots some believe them to be. Rather, a key part of their skillset is being able to manage their emotions in public so they can be the face of strong leadership.

In private, it is a different story. No matter how effective your approach is, Jones says improving a struggling school is always going to take its toll on a headteacher.

“I cried for two weeks when I got the job,” she remembers, thinking back to the beginning of her first turnaround. “Nobody else wanted it because it had a terrible reputation, a budget deficit and the building was falling to bits.”

Christina Zanelli Tyler, headteacher of West Cliff Primary School in Yorkshire, has also turned around two schools. She says the stress can be suffocating.

“You’ve got a hard job because it’s living in a goldfish bowl,” she says. “As a school, your staff and you are under constant scrutiny. You’ve got external pressure from HMI and your local authority. The local authority has to put pressure on the school and you’ve got lots of people in the school telling you what you should be doing. Sometimes it’s difficult to step back and think ‘What do I want to do? What’s my priority?’”

Brislen says the confidence of fixer heads can also be a face they put on.

“Every time I do this, I think: I’ve been blagging my whole career, this is the time it is all going to come crashing down. There’s always that self-doubt,” he says. “You ask yourself ‘Why am I doing this?’, because there is a personal cost, to your energy levels, to your health. It’s stressful. Often it’s a good kind of stress, but it’s still stress.”

Masking this private emotional impact can often be necessary to inspire staff and students and to ensure they get behind the vision. It’s not being unemotional that separates them out as successful fixers, it is the ability to take on the burden of the stress and be seen to cope with it in public when it matters. Brislen refers to this as having an “emotional bank account”, which he invests in daily.

“I can then draw down when making those difficult decisions that do occur and keep people onside,” he says.

Given the toll it takes on them and the huge career risks involved, why do these heads keep going back to repeat the trick? After all, if you do it a couple of times, you can quickly gain semi-celebrity status in education circles and easier work will find you.

The multiple turnarounds many fixer heads have completed, though, suggests that the easy option is rarely taken. They say this is something they are compelled to do, despite the negative aspects of the role.

“When I looked round, I saw people who needed me,” says Jones. “That’s the thing. I saw that they needed somebody who knew what they were doing.”

Brislen, who has now turned around eight schools, says he keeps doing it because he feels it is his responsibility to do so.

“People said to me ‘Why on earth are you going there?’ and I would jokingly say, ‘These are the kids who are going to have to pay my pension in years to come, so it’s in my best interest to make sure that they are able to do that’,” he says. “Mostly, though, I do it because it’s the right thing to do. The driver is the moral imperative. You have to start with that. If you don’t have that, then you’re not going to be able to do this work.”

This is a sentiment you hear from fixer heads time and again. While they take on difficult headships in part because they love a challenge and thrive under pressure, the real reason they say they do what they do comes from what Lancashire calls “a really strong sense of moral purpose”.

Legacy builders

But there are some that question whether that moral purpose sometimes has a sell-by-date. There is a perception in some circles that fixer heads sweep in with short-term fixes, leave with the plaudits, and that long-term success is not necessarily ensured.

Lancashire admits that a trait among many fixers is that they are better at turnarounds than sustained performance over time.

“One of the common characteristics of this type of head is that they are not so good at maintaining or sustaining, because this doesn’t present the same level of challenge,” he argues. “I know this is true of me.”

Gemma Clarke, who took on leadership of Tymberwood Academy in Gravesend, Kent, while the school was in special measures (it is now “good” with “outstanding features”, and Clarke has since moved on to a new school), believes that some fixer heads are simply not cut out to remain in a school. She suggests that it can be beneficial to have another head come in who will be able to maintain and tweak the systems that a fixer has put in place. “You need to put measures in place to be able to sustain things,” she explains. “But then you need a fresh pair of eyes to develop things further and to bring new experience.”

Brighouse backs up this idea, saying, “there are some people who are very skilled at giving a school the beginning of a turnaround, but who aren’t so good at sustaining that change. Perhaps they are the person who takes up the role as a stopgap before somebody long-term comes in.”

But Lancashire argues that this should not translate to poor long-term prospects for the school. He says a successful turnaround - and a successful turnaround headteacher - creates a firm framework and succession line for ongoing success.

“This is one reason that I set up a multi-academy trust, to bring together a group of like-minded heads who can do this sort of work,” he explains.

McWilliams agrees. He does not see himself as some kind of “knight in shining armour who charges in to save the day, before moving quickly on to the next school in need”. The Oxford Academy is the second school in special measures that he has been headteacher of, but he doesn’t plan to leave this one any time soon. Instead, he sees a turnaround as an ongoing process.

“We have not done it yet. You never turn a school around,” he says. “It’s continuous improvement. We really do work as hard as we can and I would never want to say that your best isn’t good enough, but there really is so much more to do and you never know what the future will bring.”

Brislen, veteran of multiple turnarounds, is clearer on this than anyone else.

“You have to do it through creating stability,” he says. “The most important thing is building that legacy up so that when you withdraw that support, that school can not just stand alone, but can go on to support others. That’s how you know you have done it and achieved what you set out to achieve.”

John Baskeyfield is now called Saint Nathaniel’s Academy, after St Barts MAT took on leadership of the school in 2014 (Brislen is CEO of the trust). From being the third-worst performing primary in the country, with an ultimatum from Ofsted hanging over it, it has now been judged “good” with elements of “outstanding” in its most-recent inspection.

While Brislen’s methods clearly work in the short term, only time will tell whether he has put in place the legacy he hoped for. However, he seems quietly confident.

“This work is not special,” he says. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just knowing what needs to be done, getting on and doing it.”

As for whether a ninth turnaround could be on the horizon, Brislen certainly wouldn’t rule it out. “I am still working in challenging schools,” he says. “It’s what I do. I want to make a difference and ensure that all children go to a good school.”

*not her real name

Helen Amass is deputy features editor for Tes and a former teacher. She tweets @Helen_Amass