What can you buy for pound;1 million these days? If your school needs urgent improvement, the answer may be the services of super-head Trevor Averre-Beeson, his trusty senior management sidekicks and support from a US educational company.
As first reported by The TES last month, Salisbury school in Enfield, north London, has hired American company Edison and Mr Averre-Beeson to help lift its results.
Salisbury staff wanting to learn more about the head should dig out copies of One out of 10 by Peter Hyman, who left his job as an adviser to Tony Blair to work as a teaching assistant at Mr Averre-Beeson’s previous school, Islington Green.
Mr Hyman writes that Mr Averre-Beeson is “uncannily similar” to the Prime Minister. Both have Fender Stratocaster guitars, though the headteacher was more successful with his rock band Press UK, touring the clubs and bars of Northern cities after they were signed to a record label.
“Trevor and Tony have a lot in common, not just the guitar playing,” Mr Hyman wrote. “Both are baby boomers, both middle class, but both strangely classless. Trevor radiates dynamism and impatience.”
It is not yet clear if Mr Averre-Beeson will also bring to Salisbury his obsession with the colour purple. At Islington Green he introduced purple uniforms and walls, which matched his purple car.
