Brookside Academy won the Tes School Award for Alternative Provision School of the Year. Head Brian Walton explains how he succeeded.  

• Make sure that you understand it’s not always going to be perfect. There are times when things do not work well. Assess, plan, do, review - celebrate the strengths that you have in your school but really acknowledge those gaps and those things that are not working and do something about them.
• What do you mean when you say SEND or inclusion in your organisation? Make sure all the stakeholders really understand where you are coming from when you use those words.
• Behaviour is everything. You need to be absolutely transparent to all of the stakeholders in your organisation about what problems you have with behaviour and what you’re doing to deal with them.
• Listen and change. There will come a time when your teachers will be telling you that you need to listen to them about what’s going on inside your organisation - and you need to change. You need to be brave enough to rip up what you’ve been doing and start again.