Leeds primary head Stephen Englefield has been investigating this issue for the National College for School Leadership, and has come up with some possible answers.

Mr Englefield suggests that headteachers who succeed in difficult schools put a priority on all their pupils making progress, whatever their starting points and ultimate levels of achievement. They also have very detailed, regular monitoring systems to track each pupil as they work towards individual targets. On the other hand, they all face unique circumstances and cannot simply follow a standard blueprint.

Mr Englefield, who visited 14 schools during his research, sets out his findings in Leading to success: judging success in primary schools in challenging contexts, which can be downloaded from: www.ncsl.org.ukmediastoreimage2englefield-leading-success-full.pdf.

More studies from the “Successful leadership in challenging contexts” programme are available at: www.ncsl.org.ukindex.cfm?pageid=randd-urban-index.

Readers can email suggestions on future Internet Insights to Sam Saunders at J.P.Saunders@leeds.ac.uk